Emperor of Ice - Sellswords Campaign Chapter 3: Part the Second

Once again the party of adventurers wearily march up the hillside approaching the mouth of Giant Pass. The knight at the rear of the group trails behind the others, limping occasionally.

Gunnar: "Come on hop-along, keep up."
Sir Robin: "Shut it! I just have trouble going uphill."
Sintamo: "What a shame we are in the bloody mountains then!"
Gunnar: "Even Eddie's walking faster than you and he's wearing platforms."
Eduardo: "They are NOT platform soles, I have orthopedic inserts!"
Eldarondo: "So how come you've been three inches taller since you bought that fancy orange robe then?"
Brother Christos: "Can we concentrate in the matter in hand? The pass is just over this rise, I went further into the pass than any of you and I'm sure I spotted the right path to get us through."

The elf and the ranger exchange looks and raise their eyebrows.

At the crest of the slope they pause taking in the scene before them.
Christos: "It's changed! I don't understand it."

A large rock plummets down from the peaks above and smashes into the ground in front of them.

Gunnar: "Yeah, well that's Storm Giants for you....cultural enemies!"


The party entered Giant Pass at a promising-looking gap in the rocks.
"Remember, this time we stick together.....wait, where's Christos?"

To begin with things went well, the PCs moved forward without opposition. However Eduardo sensed a strange fluctuation in the magical mana.
" Odd, the magical energy seems weak here. Usually it's stronger in the mountains."
"It's probably your platforms, are they insulating you from the natural energy?"
"They're orthopedic insoles!"

Two ogres and a troll did show up, but there were all in the far NE corner for some reason, we just assumed they were snacking on the remains of the giant we had killed a few days previously.

Suddenly a group of rock goblins appeared behind the party.  Concentrating, Eduardo gathered his magical energy....

....FIREBALL!
Eldarondo: "You missed one!"
Eddie: "Consider it a gift to you, he's not worth the energy of another fireball."
Twang...thud..."Urgh"!
Eldarondo "Thanks!"

Things are looking good. The party is unhurt so far, the odd rock goblin ambush was easily dealt with.
Sintamo: "Eddie, look out!"
"What, spiders?" Eduardo cried as he jumped backwards.
As he did so a small form landed on the ground where he had been standing with a wet splat!
"What was that?"
Sintomo nudged the inert figure with his foot.
"Rock goblin ambush, I told you they were a bit thick!"

There is little opposition and ranging ahead, Brother Christos has spotted an opening in the rocks that led to the far side of the pass.
It was at this point Eduardo "the Magnificent" (his words not mine) chose to open his mouth and utter the immortal words...."This is a lot easier than last time!"
The rest of the party glared at him.
"You utter troll's arsehole, you've really done it now!"

Of course from now on we saw repeated PCs failing activations (two characters failed all 3 activations in the next turn!) The ogres got aggressive and rushed forward and lots of rock goblins started showing up.

leaving the hack'n bash merchants more skilled fighters to deal with the ogres, Sintamo hurried back to help Eddie and Eldarondo....

....who had found a fire giant!

Despite wounding the monster the elf went down in hand to hand combat.

Sir Robin and Brother Christos took down the first ogre.

Sintamo stuck an arrow into the second ogre, before Gunnar charged in and finished it off.
"Cultural enemy!"

More ogres and lots of goblins now showed up, after a frantic melee with them and the fire giant, both Sir Robin and the dwarf fell, surrounded by the bodies of their foes (in fact Robin had killed the last of their immediate enemies, then was felled by a stone chucked by a hill giant).

Sintamo turned the hill giant into a pin cushion, while Eldarondo used his healing skill to get the dwarf back on his feet, then Eduardo finished the beast off with a FIREBALL!

No sooner has the elf revived Sir Robin than the ogres reach the party and another ice giant arrives to join the party. Christos narrowly avoids being crushed by a random rock thrown from the peaks above by leaping out of the way. As the PCs square up to the ice giant, a rock goblin sneaks up on Gunnar and cuts the previously wounded dwarf down!

In the meantime Sir Robin and Sintamo take out the goblins blocking the party's escape route.

Eddie excels himself by launching multiple fireballs to take down the ice giant before anyone else gets hurt.

The party move on to engage the ogres blocking their way to their fallen comrades. Christos takes out the first ogre, then avoids the second, to run back and pick up the dwarf. Robin and the ranger finished off the second monster.

Taking advantage of a brief lull, Sintamo ran back to pick up Eldarondo and legged it towards the exit point with the elf over his shoulder.
The PCs manged to outpace the multiple goblin hordes pursuing them escaped without further loss.
This shows the table layout just after the last PC escaped.

Sintamo managed to revive the elf but when they tried to bring Gunnar around he was beyond their help.

Fortunately we could afford to get him resurrected (I tend to think of "dead" characters just being too badly injured to be helped by the first aid healing PCs can provide and resurrection actually being more specialist magical "surgery").

Ironically, the reason we had the cash in the group kitty was that Gunnar had taken the time to loot the ice giant he had killed in our first attempt at the pass!