BECMI Chapter 364 – Heart of the River
I frowned slightly at Grimbol’s question on the Gargantuas. “Based on the corpses we’ve butchered down and examined… it looks like the process sacrifices three or seven others of the same type of creature, using them as a spell component and source of raw material to permanently keep the base creature at much more than its normal size and mass and everything. Normally, things grown to artificial size aren’t that much tougher overall than their smaller forms. Gargantua’s creations have the combined toughness of all the creatures melded together to make them.
“The creatures are probably tormented by four or eight sets of identity and memories, the pain of dying horribly mixed with the horrible agony of accelerated growth, all reinforced with magic. They are much tougher than other creatures of similar size, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“Aye. The ‘little’ ogres bin tougher than a Hill Giant by a fair margin, the big ones bin massively so… in addition to near twice as tall!” he agreed quickly. “The two sizes bin a bit jarring, what we’ve seen, but at least the smaller ones bin somewhat easier to kill, well enough.”
I could only nod. Gargantua seemed to have two sizes for his creations, at x2 and x4 normal height. Even the x2 ones were as tough as four of the base creatures, while the larger ones seemed to be about eight times, along with increased Strength and Constitution of being just that damn big. Their Stature effect was even stronger than that of Jotuns, clearly magically enhanced. A big Gargantuan Ogre could look down on a Mountain Giant, the tallest of Jotuns, and beat the giant into the ground without too much trouble.
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Writer’s Note: Gargantua were the very first templates in all of D&D. A Gargantuan Creature is made thusly: Height: x2; Hit Dice: x8, with +’s = to +1 HD/+; Movement Rate: x2; Damage: x4 (!!!); Saves: as Fighter of equal HD.
--- This means a 12 foot Gargoyle has 32 HD, 4x greater than a Hill Giant of equal height. Hardly Gargantuan…
---I’m instituting a lesser Gargantua with half the bonuses at x2 Height, and the full above bonuses at 3 to 4 times the height. So a true Gargantuan Gargoyle would be 24’ tall, taller than a Storm Giant with 15-20 Hit dice.
--They also get the 3E respective Strength, Con, and Natural AC bonuses of a bigger creature, so they are at least a little harder to hurt.
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There’d been no progress whatsoever on locating the wizard’s base of operations, meaning he was definitely being protected by Someone who was enjoying his work. Likely there weren’t any Gargantuas in the vicinity of the place, either, given how he liked dumping them randomly about the landscape.
Still smart enough not to do it in the southern nations where so many spellcasters would make a point of tracking him down and explaining their displeasure…
Well, it was another way to keep high-level teams happy and give them something to do. The big things tended to accumulate a lot more loot than their normal-sized equivalents, which was always appreciated. At least, until you realized where that loot came from and wondered how many folk were eaten to accumulate it.
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The creatures who died from the river water under the new moon formed the extra energy allowing the Curse to make saberclaw packs.
The insight came to me as I flew along upstream along the Saber River on Duum’s back, my big Familiar casually winging his way along banking and forth from one shoreline to the opposite, seeing if there was anything interesting I could poke my nose into/solve with a dash of magic.
It was the waxing of the moon, so there were creatures wandering around in a hazy frenzy of violence, looking for something to fight and kill. I frowned when I realized that did not include one another, despite making lots of noise that should attract them to one another.
Then I considered the fact that, you know, there were still a LOT of creatures out there that hadn’t died to the river, and they really should have. The only ones that had probably died… were the ones who hadn’t drank from it previously. First timers, the ignorant, dying almost instantly to the tainted waters… and providing fuel and raw material to make the saberclaws.
There was a crack and crashing of tree limbs, and a head-sized rock hurtled out my way as a great armored humanoid figure with emerald skin and golden hair came powering through the treeline. He was drooling, his glowing yellow eyes reddened with artificial fury, and wanted to take his rage out on me.
Duum flicked his wings and rose easily above the hurled rock, letting it hurtle on by below and vanish into the river with a loud splash. Without being told, he altered course towards the enraged storm giant.
In any normal circumstance, the pure size of my big Bat would have warned the giant that messing with him was a bad idea. When Duum pulled a 20g turn without any visible effort, that should have sent the alarm bells clanging.
Instead, the giant straightened up from his crouch and threw another rock at us.
Duum flitted left as if weightless, and it shot on by while he headed straight for the giant. The big fellow seemed to clench his hands, looking around as if wondering where his weapon was, and then simply braced for the collision without any fear.
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Instead, Duum pulled up twenty feet short and flapped his wings once.
It was artfully combined with Primus’ Gust of Wind, and despite the storm giant being very big and very heavy and loving being out in storms, well, that was a LOT of wind to take to the face.
His surprise at being plucked off his feet and hurled into the branches of the trees behind him came right through his maddened rage state, crashing into a stately maple tree, shattering a lot of branches and falling to the ground in an awkward tumble as he crossed his arms against the wind and debris.
Ranged Remove Curse smacked him in the face as he lowered his arms, a white skull bigger then his own bonking him on the head and exploding in white roses that covered him from head to toe, sprouting right out of his own skin. They slowly turned black from the stems to the petals, draining the Curse right out of him as he gasped and shook at the magic being sucked forth from his mind and body.
Golden eyes flashing with internal lightning looked down as the white roses turned black and fell away from him, their petals fluttering around and breaking apart as they did so. He looked up at me in shock, Duum just hanging there in the air without beating his wings despite being larger than a roc, and now grinning openly at the giant.
“The River is poisoned with a great Curse not yet broken. It puts those who drink it to sleep during the full moon, drives them mad with rage when waxing or waning, and kills those who drink from it during the dark moon,” I informed him in Jotun. “It is a Curse, not a poison, and can only be removed as one. Warn your kin, and ‘ware of the creatures who have drunk from it, elder.”
The giant hove himself to his feet, largely unharmed from his impromptu ride, and sketched a bow to me. “I am Temporamaus of the Thundersons Clan!” he introduced proudly, deep voice somehow providing its own stereo echo for thunderous emphasis, quite attention-getting. “Who do I have to thank for the return to my right mind?” he called forth politely.
“I am the Lady Edge, and this is my Familiar Duum, elder,” I replied politely. Lightning coiled and sizzled in his head at my voice, and he blinked, most impressed.
“How do you do?” Duum asked politely as well, startling the giant, especially when a spectral bony hand tipped his elegant top Hat for him.
“I am well, great Bat,” the giant replied with only a little hesitation. “I shall take your words to heart, elfin!” he promised me sincerely.
“Your spear is about four miles back down the shoreline that way, probably where you knelt to drink, or took a bath.” I pointed behind me. “Stay away from the water, elder, and warn your kin with the thunder. I will notify you to spread the word when the river is safe!”
“I await your success then, elfin!” he answered, having an inkling he was dangerously out-matched here.
Duum turned and looked like he was falling sideways through the air as he zipped backwards, out over the river and picking up speed quickly, while barely flexing his wings. The giant watched us go, clearly a bit bemused and curious over something that flew with such gravity- and mass-defying agility.
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-Well, that was a quick way to burn nine Teleport Runes,- Sama’s /voice came in on me. She was wearing a Girdle of Giant Strength with a Permanent Warrior’s Womb added to it, so nobody who didn’t recognize it knew that she was several months along, doing everything she should normally be doing, except a tad less involvement in high-end combat.
She had plenty of students itching to do that stuff for her, and she could just stand back and Warlord and critique their teamwork if she liked.
-Nine? A full fellow? Who?- I had to /ask in return, exactly as intended.
-Grimbol’s.-
I was up in the mountains, sitting on the side of a canyon looking down at a massive rush of Elementally pure and magically fucking Cursed to the nines waterfall coming out of the side of the peak I was overseeing. The quantity of water actually multiplied about ten times over as it fell, forming the gushing heart and true source of water of the Saber River.
The Curse Magic on those waters was pretty damn solid, too.
-What the Hell did they run into that required a total instant evacuation?- They could call for a Mirror Portal, the Runes were only to be used for a true instant getaway, no hesitation, just GO.
-Grimbol described it as a beholder the size of a cottage.-
She fed me the visualization of it, and I just kind of stared at it in disbelief.
He was right. The damn thing was over twenty feet in diameter. Its eye-stalks were more like spheres on logs, jutting out in all directions like spokes on a sphere, the mottled green and black scales dripping with mossy hairs or tentacles or something, and the eyes themselves thrumming with ready power, snaggly-toothed jaws big enough to swallow a cow without trouble.
They were all veined with red from the River’s Curse, too.
-He didn’t wait for it to fully turn around or get anything past the first shot, which popped an old oak and killed it instantly.- She visualized a hundred-year oak just withering instantly, every leaf collapsing and shriveling, falling to dust before they could hit the ground, branches breaking and sagging and collapsing as it died so very, very thoroughly.
But the dwarf taking shelter behind it didn’t. Everyone in Grimbol’s Fellowship got behind cover, broke their Runes as the central eye swept a cone of gray Anti-magic over them, the trees intercepted it with areas of sheltered color, and they were gone.
-That guy is utterly mad. Some Immortal is loving the crap out of him,- I had to /say. -A bloody Gargantuan beholder?!-
And then I licked my lips. -Do you know how valuable those eyes would be? Especially that central eye there?-
Sama /laughed low and slow. -Ah, you never disappoint. That damn central eye is two feet across. Grimbol said the Anti-Magic Cone from it extended at least sixty yards, he couldn’t be certain of the maximum due to the forest around. Briggs did a back of the hand calculation, and said the value is ‘we definitely want those’.-
I considered the image of the thing, the power of its eye-beams, the range and devastating power something like that would have.
-If the deductions are right, he killed at least seven other beholders to make this thing. Have to give the guy chops for Iron Balls of Insanity. At least he realized he couldn’t control it and got rid of it...- I had to /admit, shaking my head. -The real challenge is resisting the lure.-
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(In terms of scale, a human would come up to its mouth if both were on the ground. https://www.instagram.com/p/C9yiT9ztu8i/)