Specifically, they’ll soak the symbol of death. Look at the post linked previously for some stat breakdowns, but there’s a decent chance that between their SR and their saves, at least a couple of them will survive the symbol. Even if they don’t, effectively counterspelling that nasty bit of work will be totally worth it.
And even after they do that, well, they won’t be the most effective combatants, but they’ll still be providing a nonzero contribution to the battle. In particular, they’ll each get off one pretty good smite.
Plus, even if only a stupid enemy would waste time and effort on attacking them, well, sometimes you do have a stupid enemy. Might as well give them an opportunity to screw up.
Poking around, giraffes seem to have 30 hit points, at least in Pathfinder, though this homebrew? gives them a hefty 53 hp. If they don’t notice the symbol on the ceiling, I trust one of Roy’s creatures (collectively less than 10 hp) will. Once activated, the symbol starts killing all living creatures within 60 feet. Cite.
Anyway 4 giraffes plus riders would use up 120+ or 212+ HP depending; the symbol’s capacity is 150. I’m guessing the Death Symbol will be depleted.
Yeah. 
I noticed there are at least 3 symbols of some sort on the floor, as well as one on the wall. Does anybody know what they are?
Yeah, I assumed the purpose of the giraffes was to delete the symbols of death before the real characters get into real fighting.
It looks like the symbols go in a line across the floor and up the wall and are on the ceiling, so I’m guessing down the other side as well and basically are making a Wall of Death (and/or Pain, Fear, etc) across the room
That implies a serious amount of spellcasting power. Symbol is an 8th level spell. Durkula can’t cast all five we’ve seen on his own in one day.
Swypo. That wasn’t supposed to be “delete”. I think I meant deplete.
There are a variety of rune/symbol type spells in the SRD 3.5, but from what I can see, a lot of them have the language,
The same magic trap language is also there for Glyphs of Warding, which are lower level than Symbols of Death.
IOW, you’re not going to see a finished Symbol unless you’re Haley, and you’re specifically Searching for something like that. The only reason they saw the Death Symbol is they caught Greg in the act of writing it. And we didn’t see the runes/traps that RedCloak and Xykon trapped his tower with, until right as Darth V popped in and triggered them.
So I dunno what those runes are. They could just be decoration, and they might be runes scribed by some of the non-vamped Dwarves. You’d think some of the vamps and spawn would know what they were if that were the case, and would know to avoid them, but maybe the runes were put there by higher ranking members of the Dwarven city and info about them wasn’t shared?
We’ll soon find out.
Oh, and
I prepared Explosive Runes this morning
Oh, and another thought. Hilgya’s on board with dusting Greg, but I can’t see her wanting to bring Durkon back. Or maybe she’ll bring him back, only to yell at him and try to then kill him. Will the Order end up fighting her—which means also fighting her very cute kid—if she gives them the finger when asked to rez Durkon?
Is there another priest around who could rez Durkon?
How do we think this issue will resolve itself?
Edit: LOL, I didn’t see Chronos’s post when I wrote mine.
I could see Loki putting in a good word for Durkon’s resurrection if only because Loki wants to save the world from Hel and presumably doesn’t want Xykon and Redcloak to screw it up a day later so having Durkon alive would help a lot with that. Even if Loki & Co are unaware of the whole Dark Prince thing, one more destroyed gate and it’s game over.
The thing is, we know Hilgya’s pissed at Durkon, but we don’t really know in what way.
If Durkon get rezzed and he made aware of the situation - he has a son he didn’t know about, his paramour has been single parenting while resenting him and so forth - he will IMMEDIATELY do what he considers the right thing. Propose marriage - for whatever that means in dwarfland - support the kid, apologize profusely, whatever.
Because the simple fact is that Durkon is genuinely a good person. He always wants to do what’s right, regardless of any personal cost to himself. I think he might be persuasive in his attempts to make good and Hilgya might go for it.
I had forgotten that not all Symbols are 8th level so you can ignore that. The line of Symbols still represents a significant use of high-level spells.
Just a technical question about those symbols: Why don’t they affect the vampires? Is it because they were written explicitly to exclude those people? Is it because vampires are already dead? (but susceptible to pain, fear, etc.) Is it an alignment thing? Because Our Heros come in a lot of alignments right now…
Could be any combination of those. The Symbol spells allow you to attune people to them, so the spell won’t affect those people at all. They could have done that, but doing that takes more time. You can also set conditions for who triggers them, which can be based on, among other things, alignment or name: In that case, the vampires crawling around are irrelevant right now, but might get caught by one when someone or something else triggers them. If that happens, they might or might not be vulnerable to the effect the symbol triggers: Undead are immune to a lot of things (in particular, anything that messes with biology, and anything that messes with the target’s mind).
1117 is up.
Elan cuts to the basic truth, as usual. 
Multi-colored anarchic giraffe plushies would absolutely rake at Christmas time, a Con, or any other gift-giving occasion for gamers. With or without a honey badger riding them.
Strange to see Hilgya only using a 4th level spell here, when presumably she has access to much more potent magic, and there are three full-fledged Vampire casters in the back to deal with. OTOH, this pretty much takes care of the spawn, and V’s still got a spell or other action for handling them in the back. And I still think Bloodfeast’s going to show up really soon.
I had no idea you could Slow undead in 3.5. I thought they were immune to all spells like that, but I guess not.