In the Hall of the Mountain King

In the Hall of the Mountain King is the 31st Chapter in the SKT Saga.

Short Summary
TWG and Hashnagg enters the old Giant Temple. They aren't the only visitors. The group finds a barbarians trying to enter the temple. After Al spooks them, the barbarians attacked. the group come out of the battle with little to no damage and spares the remaining barbarians. the group arrives in a room with statues and an inactive gate, and thus begins the quest to find a way to activate the gate.

Long Summary
As the group enters the temple, Ben spots a set of foot humanoid foot prints entering the temple. the party readied for the possibility of a battle. As Everyone was walking through the entrance and Al noticed grooves in the walls and floor, which he assumed to be part of a trap. the traps failed to activate, possibly due to the temple being thousand of years old. the group then enters a hall with balconies over looking it.

Since Al was a head of the rest of the party, he noticed a light at the end of the hall and figure moving around it. Al immediately starts walking towards them, yelling "hello, there". the people that were near the fire charges Almond. The people were 8 individuals, 7 men and a woman. As they charged Al tries to not to seem threatening and talked to them in common, to which they either did't answer or ignored him. Half of the Barbarians got past Al's sanctuary, those who didn't ran past him to attack the next person they saw, Hashnagg, who was carrying a burning tree as a torch. Then the female Barbarian casted dancing light to illuminate the area, which revealed to them the other's in the group.

During the battle, Hashnagg was casually hitting 4 Barbarians who couldn't get past his armor, Al was fighting 3 Barbarians, including the leader and his enslaved Dragon Wyrmling, and Ben and the Barbarian spell caster fighting long range and assisting their teammates. for the first half of the battle Yen, HD and Lox where trying to get close to the fight, Yen and lox kept their distance, choosing to use long range spells, HD ran on the wall towards the Barbarians fighting Hashnagg and shot bolts at the barbarians fighting Al.

Midway into the battle, Ben dispatched the Barbarian spell caster and noticed Al was in really bad shape, so he used dimension door to pull Al out of the fight. Al healed himself and ran back into the fight. Before he could get back to the Barbarian leader and stop him non-lethally, HD shot a bolt through his eye killing him. Then when Ben announced to Hashnagg, to leave atleast on alive, the last two barbarian's noticed their leader was dead and they were out number. they dropped their weapons and surrendered.

After a failed attempted to communicate with the Barbarian's Hashnagg pointed to the door and they left after bowing to HD. Which they did, because she killed their leader and took his necklace, according to Hashnagg, any of the tribe HD encounter would treat her with respect, if she had the necklace.

Almond noticed that the enslaved Dragon Wyrmling was trapped under the Barbarian leader and they were panicking. Almond calmed them down by talking softly to it. The Wyrmling was a Red Dragon Wyrmling, no larger than a cat, they had a contraption on them, they stopped them from flying and blinded them. After Lox analysed the contraption, the group knew that it was held together by an enchantment that can easily be broken. Yen with a word to his teammates used Dispel magic on it, freeing the dragon, then when Yen tried to pet the dragon, they got spooked and flew into the balcony like area.

Ben expressed that it would be bad to let a chromatic dragon free into the world, even if it was a Wyrmling, no more than 3 years old, half of the group agreed to track and tame the dragon, while the other half thought it best to leave it be. the group left undecided on the matter for now.

The group get to the end of the hall where the barbarian's were at, it was a set of large steps that ascended to a double door covered in ice and frozen shut. Ben and Lox used Firebolt to melt the ice on the doors and Hashnagg, with some effort pushed the door open.

The group enters into a much more open room with 7 statues, 3 on either side of the room and one larger statue in the middle. the statues on the the sides resemble the a type of true giant, excluding Titans. According to Hasnagg the larger statue in middle should represent Annam, and the others were Storaeus Stonebones, Thrym, Stronmaus, Grolantor, Surtur, and Memnor. Statues on the side were kneeling towards the Annam's statue and they were offering a weapon, except the weapon on the frost Giant, Thrym's statue was missing. Hashnagg theorized that it would be a battleaxe, he then placed his own battleaxe on the statue's hand, after Ben suggested it could activate something, which it didn't.

At the end of the room was a rune covered arch jutting out from the wall. the wall under the arch was covered by a fog. Ben reached into the fog only to feel the wall. the group decide that the oracle would be behind the fog wall, that they need to activate the runes on the arch to get past, and the only thing that could activate the runes if the real battle axe was placed in the hands of Thrym's statue.

The Group thaws a door behind Thrym's statue and enters a room that seems like living quarters. The room was acorridor with smaller rooms without doors on each side, moreover the room was slightly slanted, making the entrance to the room slightly lower than the back of the room, and near the entrance is a statue of a stone giant looking down the corridor. Ben instructs the group to search the rooms, as the group splits up and searches the room ben sets on a pressure plate and hears something rolling, he immediately warns the others and jumps into a room, the other do the same before the rolling object, which turned out to be a boulder got too close. After the boulder passes them and headed to the entrance of the room, everyone meet in the room where yen was at. Then everyone hears the boulder hit where the statue was, and they hear the boulder rolling back slowly. as it passed the room everyone noticed that the statue had become animated and was pushing the boulder up. The Group wait for the statue to push the boulder all the way up, and they wait some more fore the statue to come back, which it did and it ignore them and goes back to its original stop.

Yen points to everyone a crack on the wall, they seem to be the perfect size for a humanoid to fit in through.

Characters

 * The Wayfarer's Guild
 * Almond
 * Benedikt
 * Lox
 * HD
 * Yenedril
 * Force Grey
 * Hashnagg
 * Barbarians
 * Barbarian leader(Wormblood)(not named yet)
 * Female Shaman
 * Barbarians
 * Red Dragon Wyrmling (enslaved)

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