Our intrepid band arrives at our next quest destination.
We start mapping the town.
Snakes. The flatfooted snake thing...does it ever get old? At first, I was like, eh, it's just a snake, we can just sword it.
But then...
....enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking house.
Loot is found in the formerly snake-infested house.
Continuing to map the village, we happen upon an impending scene of tasteless rape.
We interrupt this tasteless rape to bring you something that doesn't explode.
More enemies pop out of the woodwork. Azira engages the troll while the rest of our intrepid band goes to put down the giant.
Splat. Bloodshifter bashes its head in. Brains go everywhere.
Another giant joins the fray. We paralyze that one, too. Azira splats the troll.
FINISH HIM!
The villagers express their opinions on the prevention of tasteless rape. Apparently, they're against it as long as they're not the ones being tastelessly raped. An attitude like that is going to result in all of you being tastelessly raped one at a time, you know. First they came for...
We locate our quest objective, the translator. He naturally sends us off on a quest first.
Interviewing the mayor of this town provides us with more information on our quest. We head off towards the fort, which is no longer blocked by the railroad shield.
Searching the area, we find a pack of Babau hiding behind the fort for no apparent reason.
So we SET THEM ON FIRE.
Entering the Hill Giant fort proper, we encounter some guards sleeping on the job.
Naturally, they are punished for their crimes. You know how they say "Sleep is good for you"? That's filthy Sleepist propaganda. Sleep is BAD for your health, as these guys demonstrate. I never sleep, and it does wonders for me. Plus you will become batshit insane, like me. Did you know that sanity is also an obstacle to success?
Stalking through the halls of the fort, we encounter an Aztec Priest Giant.
We are able to penetrate his saves anyway and paralyze him. BOOM! Headshot!
We have disturbed a side chamber full of trolls. They attack us.
Azira dispatches a troll.
Having cleared the halls, we begin a systematic room by room sweep of the side rooms.
We kick in this room full of frost giants. They are hardy, but still burn nicely.
With them pinned in the room by our door blockade, we SET THEM ON FIRE.
The next room we search reveals some orc slaves. They would surely not be worth the fireballs to incinerate, so we let them go, gaining more XP than we could have gained by simply setting them on fire. Besides, who knows? Maybe orcs aren't all heinously evil in the KotC milieu. And even if they were, we can always set them on fire later. On to the next club!
We kick in another door to reveal an overly talkative miniboss giant and his minions.
First we block the doorway and allow them to queue up...
...and then we set them on fire.
The giant attempts to set us on fire, but we counter his attack by setting him on fire first with a readied fireball.
We counterspell him again with MORE FIRE.
Finally giving up in the "spellcasting" business, he charges. Hirato FIRES HIS LAZOR.
With a firm whack to the knees, he falls on his ass and fatally hits his head and dies. We loot his corpse, finding his Wolf Wand.
We search the next room and find more wolves, which we menace with our stolen wolf wand, gaining more XP than if we had set them on fire. They leave us alone now.
Continuing to search the new chambers, we find a DRAGON. We take cover around a corner, and then as it turns around, we try to jump it. Azira readies some leftover dragonslaying arrows.
Azira gets the drop on the dragon...
BOOM! Headshot!
Hey, lookie what this room has. I wonder if we'll actually get to use these. They rely on fort saves, which tends to make them kind of crap against enemies that have good fort saves. Like giants. And dragons. That one dragon ate all of our dragonslaying arrows, too.
We search another room. Filthy Sleepist scum!
Let this be a lesson: Sleep Kills. Those who sleep are murdered in the night. REMEMBER THIS. Sleep is NOT good for you.
We search another room for another miniboss. We paralyze him, but unfortunately he breaks free immediately next round before we can stab his eyes out.
IMMA FIRIN' MAH LAZOR!
Slashy, slashy.
We search another room, with more enemies.
And then we SET THEM ON FIRE. Does that ever get old? It doesn't for me. What about you?
MORE FIRE!
The last survivor of the room is cornered and given a a sword-based enema.
Hey, would you look at that? They actually ask us for an entry policy. They *DO* understand entry. WHY ISN'T EVERY DOOR POTENTIALLY INFESTED WITH ENEMIES LIKE THIS? Unfortunately, there's no option for "kick in door and then STAY OUTSIDE and NUKE THE ROOM".
Noting that being INSIDE is a bad plan, we take advantage of our surprise round to withdraw BACK to OUR side of the door and ready against attack and spells.
An enemy caster tries to cast Displacement. Why, I have no idea. It's not like it will protect him from how we do business...but we interrupt him anyway. With FIRE.
He doesn't learn. As the door blockade gums up, he tries again anyway. We counter with FIRE.
Bloodshifter lobs some sonic boom into the doorway. It is a weak attack, but it actually stuns some stuff.
With the doorway gummed up, we need a bigger blast radius and bust some Ice Storm out.
YEAAAH! More enemies move into the AOE zone.
We shoot some more FIRE at the door clog.
MEDIC! New heal spell, better than those crap heal spells. The line at the door holds firm.
We continue to hold the line.
And use MORE FIRE.
Finally, the Giant King is all that is left. His armor is nigh-impenetrable, but armor is no defense against FIRE. Or this.
VICTOLY! XP GET! Strangely, this was only one level. The rest of the fort remains unsearched. We must search it.
Descending into the basement, we discover some orcs, giants, and a freaking dragon. A HUGE freaking dragon. We prod the orcs to attack the giants.
Unfortunately, they are of no help, but have not yet obstructed the line of fire yet.
We attempt to counterspell the Dragon, but the attempt fails. The orcs are getting themselves killed.
With most of them dead and no chance of them actually surviving, we give up on them and NUKE THE ROOM.
Lobbing more crap into the room, we notice that the dragon is loathe to enter the plague zone, instead shuffling about the room in confusion.
Indecision must be punished with fire. Lots of fire.
This scene repeats itself many times over the next few rounds as the dragon shuffles indecisively around the insect plague area.
Finally, it gives up and charges the door. We give it more fire anyway.
And Harm. We give it harm, too, since it is resisting being hit.
Now mortally wounded, we kill it. With fire.
We commence sweeping the lower chambers. With fire.
Oh, hey. Finally, a SENSIBLE entry. Do we actually knock first?
Of course not. Because that would be stupid. We rudely kick in the door, and...EAT FLAMING DEATH!
Because all you need is FWOOSH.
Another room of enemies, another FIIIIREBALL.
Pew-pew! We shoot down the last survivors.
This room is a jail. Containing more orcs. We release them, only to be immediately attacked from behind.
Naturally, we respond with FIRE.
Advancing rapidly to secure the chokepoint, so that our suicidal rescuees don't get themselves killed, Azira one-rounds a troll.
We continue our charge. Our useless allies threaten to get themselves needlessly killed.
More enemies pour into the room. But hey, I like a target-rich environment. The more, the flamier.
Our useless allies force their way past us, but we manage to set enemies on fire anyway.
The day is saved. The reckless prisoners will live to give us bonus XP. We loot the corpses.
Full up on vendortrash, we take a brief stop to unload it. We notice the Merchant will pay a decent price tag for a completely empty wand. We let him have it and make a new one, there doesn't appear to be any additional cost for doing so as opposed to recharging an old one, according to the crafting UI. Maybe he wants it for the kill notches.
We bash in another room. This one has FIRE giants. Maybe we will need an ice wand for when we clear their lair. Except apparently you can only make wands out of L4- spells. No Phasers, I guess. The list of things immune to both fire AND ice is pretty slim, though. And we're due to get a new form of explosion soon, no doubt.
We release more prisoners, get more bonus XP.
More filthy Sleepist Scum. Didn't these guys learn that SLEEP IS BAD FOR YOU yet?
We kick in yet another room full of flammable foes.
And another...
And another...
We take advantage of a brief lull in the action to upgrade and screenshot Azira's new toy. What should the other one be, once we can afford to make it?
And then we nuke a room. We always nuke rooms.
Azira's new sword packs a mean wallop.
In a change from setting fire to rooms, we set fire to a corridor.
This guy has been in his cell a little too long.
These guys have been in their cells WAY too long.
Arpad's mace destroys them instantly. If only it were made of something shiny instead of Genericium.
Azira's new sword destroys the troll on the right in a single round. The rest fall similarly quickly. Imagine what it will be like with two of them.
We find more orc prisoners and let them go for some more XP.
We search a new water area full of centipedes, for once being allowed to INITIATE AGGRESSIVE ACTION.
Which means a bombardment of Sonic...
Followed by FIRE. We find an option to perform a one-way swim-teleport to an unknown place, but we decline to take it, as we have unsearched staircases. Besides, swimming in full plate is silly.
Instead, we search the upstairs tower, kill some filthy Sleepist Scum, and turn in our quest and vendortrash.
Returning to search the Downhatch in the basement, we immediately encounter a portal trap.
Which we resolve with FIRE.
Searching the tunnels, we find this scene.
Which gives us another stick of MORE FIREBALLS.
Also, salamanders who taunt us with their fireproofness, but not their iceproofness. Nyah!
We give them MOAR!
Clearing our path through, we meet some non-hostile orcs who give us some magical trinkets which are mostly incompatible with what we're actually using. But at least they'll vendortrash well.
It's not bad, but it's not for us.
Continuing our search, we find some FREAKING BUGS, which we USE FIRE on.
And then Hirato FIRES HIS LAZOR.
Another cave full of hostiles to nuke is found.
We nuke them some more.
They nuke back at us, but we have some modest fire protection for defense against stray explosions, so it merely tingles unpleasantly.
You know they say revenge is a dish best served cold, but extra crispy works pretty well, too.
Although endarkenated and blind, Hirato doesn't need to see it to nuke it. Vision is irrelevant to indiscriminate burnination.
Area cleared of all hostiles.
We search the remaining area to find only a non-aggressive lizardman tribe and their treasury, which they ask us not to rob. We oblige them for now, because, eh, what could they have that's worth stealing anyway? But if you suggest we go back and knock the place over, we can.
With the area cleared of all hostile activity (the swim route leads to the lizardman caves), it's time to move onto our next destination: Probably The Fire Giants.