AN ADVENTURER’S CHRONICLE: Against the Stone Giant Clans Sessions 9 & 10
The continuing saga of the battle against marauding hordes of stone giants from an adventurer's journal.
By R. Nelson Bailey
Introduction
Welcome to the campaign journal chronicling the battle against the stone giant clans of Flóndisheim. This adventure became the DUNGEON DELVE module DDS5 Valley of the Stone Giant Clans. The journal features the main characters from my weekly Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) group, who began their careers a few years ago as 1st-level characters. This journal recounts their continuing saga.
After years of hard adventuring, the party retired to their homes to rest for a year. Their respite ended when a contingent of dwarves arrived, seeking help against stone giant raiders. This prompted the party's next adventure, detailed herein.
The campaign uses First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, naturally modified with a few house rules. Most of the characters have reached “name level”—roughly 9th or 10th level. The party consists of the following characters:
Thokk, 10th-level half-orc thief (player: Rob)
Azley, 9th-level human magic-user (player: Andrew)
Melkor, 9th-level human ranger (player: John)
Vrask, 8th-level half-elf druid (player: Stormie)
Fighto, 8th-level half-elf fighter (player: Tim)
Lucian, 9th-level human cleric (player: Greg)
Tinae, 9th-level half-elf bard (player: Dan)
(Editor’s Note: Bards in this campaign are more akin to those in Second Edition AD&D than to those in First Edition.)
The party’s exploits are chronicled in the journal of the bard Tinae. Her player, Dan, writes the journal during gameplay to recall the previous week’s events and to provide a reference for the players. He has kept a weekly journal for the game for over 10 years. Keep in mind that this is not a full accounting of the adventurer’s experience, merely their highlights. Much has been abridged or omitted.
So read on. Hear of the exploits—both triumphant and tragic. As the journal is written from the player’s perspective, I, the editor, will periodically interject to clarify the situation for you, the reader.
Previous Installments
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TINAE’S JOURNAL—A NEW BEGINNING
Session 9 — 24 April 2026
We continued exploring the cavern complex. We looked into a huge throne room with a large hole in the floor that looked suspiciously like a purple worm burrow. Vrask flew down into the pit as an owl, descending more than 100 feet before reaching the bottom, which was piled high with stone bodies and broken fragments. Apparently, the pit was the dumping ground for victims of the basilisk. We found many round, scarred areas on the stone floor where statues had been dragged to the pit. We followed the scratch marks to a stairway leading up.
Stone Giant Adventurer's Chronicle
The tunnel split, with steps leading up to the right and a small cave partially filled with rubble in the other direction. Thokk moved into the rubble room, heading toward its far side. As he neared the far wall, the floor beneath him snapped up around him, squeezing and suffocating him. (Editor’s Note: This was a monster called a trapper.) I rushed up and sliced the thing’s hide open, but I think my attack inadvertently injured Thokk as well. Melkor and Fighto grabbed the edges of the thing’s body and tried to pull it open, but they couldn’t. Azley cast a magic missile spell, wounding it, then cast ray of enfeeblement on the thing, allowing us to finish it with ease. Once we freed the mostly dead Thokk, we returned to the cave where we had rested earlier. We relearned our spells and healed our wounds.
We decided to leave this complex and search for a new cave entrance farther down the valley. (Editor’s Note: The party left the Basilisk Clan cave system halfway through exploring it to search for another cave. I am not sure why they opted to do this. However, years of experience running many D&D games have shown me that when confronted with multiple options, players will experience decision paralysis, wanting to find the best option. The Goldilocks Scenario. What ends up happening is that they convince themselves that options X and Y are bad and that a better option must exist somewhere. They waste time being picky and indecisive. As the Devo song says, “Freedom of choice is what you got, freedom from choice is what you want.”)
Entering the new cave, we walked down a long, wide tunnel and heard giantish voices up ahead. As we moved into a dimmer area, we spotted two cave bears in the room ahead. Lucian cast silence 15′ radius on a stone, and we used it to surprise and kill the sleeping cave bears. We continued to another cave, catching several sleeping giants by surprise. I hurled a fireball into their midst, badly wounding most of them. That woke them, and they responded by hurling boulders, one of which disrupted my reduce spell. Vrask hit them with faerie fire, and Azley cast slow on them. We made short work of them and moved on to the next cave.
This cave held two adult giants and two child giants. Azley struck first, unleashing a cone of cold that froze the children solid and frosted the adults. One adult hurled a boulder at Azley, striking the mage square in the face and killing him. (Editor’s Note: The giant rolled a natural 20 with the boulder.) We killed both adult giants shortly thereafter. We looted the room and found a substantial number of coins, which we put in a chest and carried out.
After finding that this cave system contained only a few caves and realizing that we needed to rest, we returned to the Basilisk Clan cave system. (Editor’s Note: What did I just say?) On the way, we narrowly avoided a wandering family of cave bears. We returned to our cave, where we healed, rested, and relearned spells. (Editor’s Note: This was a secondary entrance to the cave system the party had discovered earlier while scouting.)
While resting, we saw and heard a large group of giants and dire wolves heading our way along the path toward the cave mouth. (Editor’s Note: These are giants from the Dire Wolf Clan across the valley, summoned to help search for and slay the adventurers who have wrought destruction on their kin.) I killed three dire wolves and badly burned another with a fireball. Lucian’s use of the wand of wonder healed him rather than harming the giants. After an exchange of insults with a giant, the giants left us alone for about half an hour.
Then we heard bestial hissing and the slapping of multiple clawed feet on the stone. The giants sent a basilisk into the cave. Melkor had poured three flasks of oil onto the ground and set it alight, immolating the basilisk. It fled, and then we heard the giants hurling logs and bundles of sticks at the cave entrance. (Editor’s Note: The giants intended to light a fire to smoke the party out of the cave.) Lucian used the wand again, turning the ground at the entrance to mud, burying Thokk and ensnaring one of the giants. (Editor’s Note: The wand produced the effect of transmute rock to mud.) Another use of the wand transformed the giant’s clothes into a blanket of daisies.
Lucian cast a raise dead spell on the slain Azley. It worked. However, the magic-user needed a full day’s rest before he could resume adventuring. (Editor’s Note: The standard AD&D rules state that raised characters require a full week of rest. In our game, it is 24 hours, provided that curative spells are used to heal the character’s wounds.)
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Session 10 — 1 May 2026
Some hours later, we heard giants outside the cave mouth discussing something. They began pounding the stone above the entrance, slowly collapsing the mouth of the cave. We prepared to carry Azley and move farther back into the bat cave. (Editor’s Note: Because he was just raised from the dead, Azley cannot do anything, even walk, until the 24-hour rest period ends.) Fighto carried Azley past the entrance just as it collapsed, sealing it. We could see giants plugging the remaining openings with more rocks.
We entered the immense bat cave that connected to where we were resting. (Editor’s Note: The party discovered this cave on a previous scouting mission.) Melkor spoke with one of the bats, who told him there was another exit down a hole and past a large lake. (Editor’s Note: The ranger used a speak with animals spell to converse with the bat.) The bats warned us of the piercers that shared the cavern with them, and not long after, the piercers began dropping on us. We rushed to the vertical hole—a natural chimney—at the far end of the cave the bat had described. Thokk tied a rope around a boulder and climbed down while I rode down on the back of Vrask, who had transformed into a giant cave lizard. All the while, piercers kept dropping from the ceiling onto us. Once down the hole, we found ourselves on a ledge over a large, steaming lake.
We moved along the ledge above the lake to an opening that led to another large cave, where we found numerous lifelike stone figures that appeared to be adventurers—apparently souvenir basilisk victims. (Editor’s Note: Yes, that is exactly what they are.)
Two passages led from the cave, one with stairs that ascended and the other remaining level. Thokk went up the stairs and saw four giants and two chained basilisks. Luckily, he avoided their gaze and came back. (Editor’s Note: Because the adventurers had previously attacked the giants in this cave system, the giants had set up guards to watch the main passages.) We decided to go back up to our resting cave. The trip went well, except that Lucian fell twice while climbing back up the chimney’s shaft.
We returned to the cave, rested, and discussed our options. We decided to summon insects to feed the bats and win them to our cause. We had the bats swarm the giants and basilisks en masse, distracting them as we approached to attack. Once we reached the bottom of the natural chimney and cleared the falling debris, we put the plan into motion. The bats did their job, distracting the giants and basilisks, but we didn’t catch them by surprise. My fireball scorched two giants and both basilisks. Azley’s lightning bolt finished off one basilisk and further wounded a giant. Lucian’s flame strike slew the other basilisk, and Vrask’s faerie fire illuminated the giants.
Melkor charged in and slew one giant, and Fighto wounded another. One of the unwounded giants ran off to get help. Melkor then killed another giant, and Fighto slew the other wounded giant. We pursued the fleeing giant, with Thokk in the lead. Thokk followed him through a door set in a wooden wall, where he found the giant wrestling one of three basilisks in the room. He attempted to backstab the giant after narrowly avoiding a basilisk’s gaze but missed. The giant turned the basilisk toward the thief in an unsuccessful attempt to petrify the half-orc. The rest of us ran to catch up with Thokk but were immediately stopped by a pair of galeb duhr. One charged Melkor and missed, and the other charged me and hit hard. The galeb duhr created a wall of stone that blocked Vrask, Lucian, and Azley from the rest of us, but Vrask immediately dispelled it with magic. (Editor’s Note: He used a dispel magic on the wall.) Lucian finished off a wounded galeb duhr.
The giant stepped out of the basilisk pen, holding a basilisk like a crossbow, and said, “Say hello to my lil’ friend,” then aimed it at us. Unfortunately, Azley met the creature’s gaze and turned to stone, taking the only stone to flesh scroll with him. (Editor’s Note: Ha! Such are the unforeseen misfortunes that often occur in a D&D game.) Fighto was curb-stomped into unconsciousness by the remaining galeb duhr. He was revived, though, and we beat down the giant until I could finish him off with a well-placed arrow. The galeb duhr sealed himself in a personal stone cocoon with a wall of stone, and the basilisk wandered back into its pen.
Thankfully, the cave led outside, where it was dark. We tied the Azley statue to Vrask, who was in draft-horse form, then left the valley and returned to our base camp cave, where our dwarf guides were waiting. They told us about the xorn, the galeb duhr, and the earth elementals. They also said the “milk of the earth” could turn Azley back to flesh. (Editor’s Note: This is the substance the party found in the Gem Garden that also acts as oil of etherealness.) We holed up, studied spells, then used the oil to restore Azley to flesh. We had inflicted grievous damage on the giants so far, but we still had to kill the giant overlord.
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