Excerpt 4

We’re not exactly making friends here. “oh hi. nice to meet you. We’re just passing through. Oh this?  This is just an ice scepter, it’s nothing. Wait, don’t… <WE KILL THEM ALL>”.
Kill, rinse, repeat.
You know, given how today went, it’s probably a good idea if next time I hide the scepter before we go introducing ourselves.

The day began well enough. At least for those of us who didn’t sleep on the beds.  Here I tried to be nice by volunteering to sleep on the floor and it turns out the beds gave everyone nightmares or something. Even my generous impulses can end up being curses. They all had nightmares about dying in the snow or being impaled by giant icicles.
Klajdu was a little unsettled even and said he dreamt that he kept falling through thin ice. He had trouble shaking the image later I think, cause I caught him tiptoeing a few times out of the corner of my eye.  And from having witnessed it I can safely say that Klajdu sucks at tiptoeing.  Good tiptoeing starts with not being 8 feet tall and wearing plate armor.

After the dream-addled ones pulled it together a bit, we stoked the fires, made a quick breakfast and took apart the barricade we’d set up in front of the doors.  It felt lame in the morning but hey I still think it was a good idea.   I chose the leftmost door to open first and it’s wolf turds, bones and bloody rags. Check please.  Boy I’m good at choosing things. Maybe I’ll shut up for a while.  The next room was more promising or if not exactly promising, at least shit-free.  The walls were filled with carvings of dwarves and dwarven script.  This reminded us of what we probably should have remembered without prompting — that Nimozaran had told us the Winter King erected his tower of skulls after conquering a nearby dwarven stronghold. Which stronghold obviously we’re inside now. Good thing I studied all that history so I can forget something I was told TWO DAYS AGO. Damn it.  Fitz was reading through them a bit and I was keen to stay and research but we heard clanking sounds coming from some stairs nearby. History can wait forever but apparently clanking cant wait 5 minutes.  Down the stairs we go into an old kitchen and there we find some new friends.  Oh good. One lank looking fellow with black hair, black robes and an unsettling-looking staff, and three dwarves with axes in their belts. All 3 dwarves and the mage are soaking wet. The dwarves don’t seem to care and they’re sorting through the jumble of pots and pans on the tables, looking for food I think. The human is wringing water out of his robes.  In the back of the room is some kind of horrible stinking trash pit but we dont give much thought to it then.  They don’t tell us their names but they claim they were frozen here by the Winter King and only recently thawed out.  What would have certainly been a long and happy friendship is ruined the moment they see the ice scepter.  They start saying and thinking silly things, like that they need the scepter so they can exchange it with the Winter King for their freedom (sure he sounds very reasonable).  We point out that they look pretty free to us already, that the outer door is just over thataway. The phrase “gtfo” crossed my mind but things proceed rapidly and these guys are not interested in simple plans.  Instead maybe they want to be filled with arrows, turned into ice and then axed apart mercilessly into little melty ice splinters. OK this sounds acceptable.

That reminds me–  Fitz made a comment about the dwarves being dumb as a bag of hammers or something, when Tungsten said “Wait aren’t you a dwarf?”.  When Fitz said no, he was only half-dwarf, Tungsten countered with “Well are they only half as stupid as you or twice as stupid?”. Gotta remember that one.

So, the battle. Here goes.  After we dropped the first dwarf, some slimy noises came from deep in the stinking trash pit and a tentacle snaked out and grabbed Tungsten.  Not your average tentacle either. A nasty thing, kind of thick at the end and bristling with barbs and thorns. While I’m trying to calculate how to rush in and attack both the tentacle and all our newfound friends with wind magic, the symmetry gets ruined.  Tungsten gets pulled towards the pit and away from the other bad guys and the mage mutters and bangs his staff and swaps places with Carn’ibald across the room.  But that’s not all folks; some more lank hair-pulling and mumbling and Fitz is turned into a piglet.  Wow. Neat tricks. I think someone should Axe him how it’s done, don’t you?   I try the wind magic anyway even though it’s only going to hit the tentacle and of course it just misses.  Mr Fancypants whacks the ground again with his staff and those of us near the pit stumble but recover, well except for Carn’ibald who falls in. I kind of lose my shit at this point and unleash the power of the Ice Scepter right at the two remaining dwarves. The sheer excellence of seeing their expressions as they were frozen will keep me going for a while.  And the damn scepter’s good for something at least.

So meanwhile in the stinking rotting pit, Carn’ibald is having a rough time.  Something takes a big bite out of him and he goes down. Beulah hops over and heals him, and then to remind us that she’s not all sunshine and roses, spins and sinks a couple arrows into the mage. Carn’ibald saw an opening right then and signaled to Klajdu something they were talking about this morning and Klajdu follows up with another mighty blow on the mage. We need to talk to this Carn’ibald guy some more because that was cool, and because when he tried it later with Tungsten it didn’t work at all.   But back to the action. Tungsten suddenly shatters one of the frozen dwarves. The wizard tries to run but as he turns Marco and Klajdu land solid blows that cost him an arm and a lot more blood than he can safely pay.  Klajdu then lets out a battlecry that scares the shit out of us (well, out of me) and charges the remaining dwarf.  Although his expression when he was being frozen was already pretty shocked, I swear he widened his eyes. Fitz is still a piglet but he’s capering about amiably, the dwarf goes down and so things are looking good. So naturally this is when the Otyugh decides to steal the show and it does so by clambering up out of the pit and jarring our senses with its unimaginable reek.

I may never complain about the smell of Klajdu’s boots again (although I promise nothing).  An otyugh smells so bad that it’s visual appearance as a huge green monster with a great gaping jaw and big barby tentacles seems almost boring.  Behind it a second kind of tentacle rises up and we can see it’s eyes back there glowering down at us stinkily.

The team working together brought the Otyugh down eventually but as they say there’s no rest for the wicked.  Oh and once enough blood left the wizard we got Fitz back so the jokes about having babyback ribs for dinner came to an end.  Which was sad because they were funny and took our minds off the killing. or maybe just mine.  We were still trying to clear our heads and find some fresh air in the room when we heard footsteps running toward us and who runs into the kitchen but a giant skeleton.  A new friend?  Signs point to No when he bursts into flame.  He’s an angry skeleton and behind him comes an angry rabble of 4 tieflings and 3 humans.

“Whoa whoa whoa there fellas. No need to get excited.  We’re here to see the Winter King”.  They weren’t really magic words but they did slow things down briefly.  They fight for the Winter King. OK.  Uh, yes OK fine I AM carrying the Ice Scepter (thanks for that Beulah).
And oh crap here we go again…..

Excerpt 5

We point out that we actually *want* to see the Winter king, so yes please take us to him, we’ll give him this Scepter and nobody needs to get Axed any unnecessary questions as it were.  For the tiniest of moments this seems possible but then we hit the wrinkly bit where they want us to give up our weapons.   Appropriate snorts, curses and maybe even a little spittle are sent back by way of answer.  I’m pretty sure I’m still in the middle of something like “Well damn you all for a pack of…”  when I notice that Beulah had already started filling them full of arrows.   The human guards also hadn’t wasted any time and Fitz and Klajdu get quickly bedazzled with crossbow bolts. Relief from our overpowering feelings of rage comes quickly in the form of an 8 foot tall goliath charging into one of the tieflings. This is when I remember I have some actual (and far more effective) curses at my disposal.   I run up a few steps, teleport into the middle of the fray and cast the otherwind curse in their midst.  A brief gale ripples the boundaries between us and the Fey, shredding and cutting the enemies as they cross the edges.  I step into one of the rifts and teleport back behind the line (this time I learned not to stay out there like a big dire-wolf chew-toy).  Tungsten, never to be outdone in the reckless-endangerment column, charges into the mess head down, ready to dodge and baring those huge orc teeth in an unsettling grin.   He misses his target at first but Carni’bald had seen some weakness in the tiefling’s guard and he calls it out across the room.  Tungsten sees it too and the next second the orc’s huge axe finds its mark.
Marco then surprises us by signalling to the gnome behind the skeleton.  Oh wait.  I forgot to mention the gnome.  OK there was a gnome back there.   I sort of edited him out cause he wouldn’t stop yapping later.  Anyway, Marco makes some sly signal to the gnome as though the gnome is on our side.  The gnome only looks confused but that wasn’t the point. The point was for the huge fiery skeleton to intercept this signal, which he does perfectly.   So at the cost of only a wink and hand gesture from Marco, the huge fiery skeleton turns slowly and sinks his huge fiery axe into the tiny shrieking gnome. It was beautiful.  We have to do that again.  Anyway, the gnome disappears somehow (despite his tunic now being on fire), and as he disappears he calls out “I can take you to the King’s wife!”.

OK?  Is that good?   Seriously, we brought the Ice Scepter for the winter king and that’s it. If we were supposed to also bring a Tiara for his wife, it ain’t happening.

At some point around now Klajdu gets badly indented by one of the guard’s halberds.  (Turns out the big poles sticking up behind their backs were halberd handles. oh joy).   Indentation Not Faze Klajdu, who becomes that roaring spinning axe-nightmare we call the Great Cleave.  He maybe hits the human but he definitely misses the big skeleton, and there’s an odd moment as he roars “Poopies!” in disgust.
(It’s possible someone may have started telling him fake “vocabulary”. This is intriguing. I need to ask around.)
Around then I set a very surprised human on fire and while he’s frantically trying to extinguish the white flames, Fitz steals my thunder completely by sinking his axe into the guy like it was nothing.
It’s really all about the axes on this trip, which is fine.
The sequence is never easy to remember but I think around then Carn’ibald calls out to the gnome “Take us to the winter king” and some other subtleties that I cant recall.  The skeleton and his friends snarl at Carn’s diplomatic intervention and they like it even less when the gnome answers back “Defeat the skeleton and I will do it”.  (Come to think of it, the gnome totally reneged on us here. He’s going down).  Anyway, Carn’ibald is on a roll so he signals to Klajdu to exploit an opening in the skeleton’s defenses right then. Klajdu exploits it and indeed lands a great blow on the skeleton but for his efforts he takes a halberd in the back from the guard he had to turn away from.  Klajdu Not Amused but he spins right back and drives his axe through that very halberd and into the halberd-wielder. While that was going on the skeleton tried to show off a bit by throwing a fireball at Fitz and although it completely hit him it didn’t seem to have any effect.  Beulah through all this is just filling people full of arrows   (I swear it’s like she gets twice the attacks as everyone else).  The last tiefling took a particularly gruesome arrow to the face and down he went.

After the battle I went back to look at the mage’s stuff since there hadn’t been any time before.  As I’m walking over there I hear the topic come up of Carn’ibald’s invoices. If we’re clearly going to share the loot and the reward, why is he so quick to write things down on his invoices?  Is it just a habit he cant break like we’ve been assuming?   Is he actually going to bill someone else in *addition* to splitting our loot?  If the latter then I don’t see why we don’t get a share of that too.   We’ll have to get an answer from him at some point.   They see me finding 50 gold pieces and a couple nice rubies on the mage, which I think is the first loot we’ve found that will require dividing. I hope it doesn’t get complicated although hell, everything else has.

Through all this yappy gnome is yapping. Rather than fulfill his promise to take us to the Winter King the gnome is now all worried about the Queen, who’s apparently locked up and in need of healing and/or rescuing. Fitz votes in favor of ignoring him.  This is totally the right call but the vote goes the other way so for a while we talk to the gnome. Beulah checks for traps down the hall the gnome went down,  we try and get him to come back to talk, all to no avail. Then we change tack and while Klajdu entreats the gnome loudly to come back, Tungsten uses the noise as camouflage to sneak down the hall to try and maybe kidnap the gnome.  It was worth a shot but Tungsten comes back emptyhanded after a while saying that the gnome just walked away almost out of earshot and went through a door.

We heal up a bit, we catch our breath, we enjoy the relatively fresh air, but we still need a rest.  Everyone who slept in those beds is still wincing now and then from thoughts of being impaled by falling stalactites and whatnot.   And it doesn’t exactly get better when we go through a little anteroom to find the Winter King’s throne room. It’s huge and deathly cold.  And oh look there are huge ice stalactites up in the ceiling, stalagmites coming up from the floor. There are chandelier’s made of ice whose candles burn with a pale magical light. In front of us is an ice bridge over a frozen lake. Faint shapes move under the surface and faint voices whisper “Do not anger the Winter King”.   Everyone who slept in the beds seems very unsettled.  Me, I don’t think anyone noticed but I’m a wreck. Obviously the last time I had to deal with an underground river it didn’t work out super well for me and I ended up becoming a warlock.

So we back away with a new and vigorous consensus to definitely get some rest, which means it’s time to find a quiet place out of the way. “Rest in Hallway Not the Best” says Tungsten and we agree. Way too many doors.  We pick one and go into a room that somehow has even more doors.  Nobody has a rhyme about the dangers of sleeping near doors but we don’t need one. We pick another door and find a cozy little room with two couches, and two tables.  The smaller table is up against the wall and I get all hopeful when I see it has some bottles on it.  Except that the bottles are all empty.  Well at least someone had the right idea.  I wish they hadn’t though because my head is a loud place right now and I’m getting low on wine.   Carn’ibald and Fitz are talking about healing lore because I gather they noticed Klajdu had picked up some disease, probably from the  “other other white meat” pork rib he ate earlier.  They give him something which seems like it might be working and we bed down for the night.

Excerpt 6

Well we don’t really look like we’ve had our beauty rest, but I can assure you that we have.  In fact I’m pretty sure we’ve been bedding down only a few hours after waking up.  I can hear the story that’s going to emerge once we get back to an inn.  More specifically I think I hear Fitz:  “Ach, time does nae pass in the realm of the Winter King, laddie….”.  It’s a good story.  Not a grain of truth to it, but it’s more believable.  At any rate, if I ever do figure out how we slept three nights in about a day and a half, I’ll probably just keep it to myself.

Last night as we were all drifting off to sleep something opened the door into the room, or that is they tried to. It harumphed a bit when it found the door blocked by our couch barricade. Next to me I swear Carn mumbled “Occupied!”.  Either I misheard him or mercenaries really do find some odd places to grab their forty winks.  We all woke up quickly but as quietly as we could and listened at the door, weapons at the ready.  Whatever it was clomped away and eventually went through another door far away. After a long silence Beulah heard voices and definitely heard the phrase “yea, they’re in there”. Discomfited and not feeling quite so sneaky, we eventually lay back down and slept.

No nightmares to deal with the following morning. Well except that Marco woke up thinking he was the gnome, which was odd.  He backed away from us and did his best to cast some illusion on Tungsten but thankfully it didn’t do anything.  I think.  The bottles were still just as empty in the morning but in the wall nearby we found a little peephole we hadn’t noticed before.

“Ah, Hole of Glory perhaps.” said Klajdu.   I was about to inquire what exactly he thought this particular phrase meant.  I mean this has to be some more “fake vocabulary” from sources unknown, but Tungsten was all over it.  “Seriously?  it’s only this big!”. Klajdu scowled as he examined the little hole more closely and so, OK, no I think he knew what it meant.  A mystery best left unsolved for sure.

Finding the peephole unsettled us a bit.  Pissed some of us off even. We must have made quite a tableau there the night before, all there listening at the door with our weapons ready.  So we snuck out and followed the left wall around, thinking we’d find the room with the peephole and get to kick someone’s ass, with righteousness and/or vindictiveness as appropriate to the asskicker. No such luck.   The room we found was cold, dark and empty.   A whole suite of rooms actually.  Except that the furniture, the carpets, the hangings, the fancy pens… everything was made of ice.  An entire stately bedroom and dressing room,  all turned to ice some ages past.  And when we found the peephole, nothing. Nobody to kill, behead, torture briefly. It was a letdown.   Around then I remembered suddenly that I should be keeping the ice scepter hidden, so as to avoid those awkward conversational moments where we have to kill people.   So I stuff it into my robe hurriedly and when everyone turns around to see what I’m doing, there’s a pause.   I find I have to clarify.  “No, I am not happy to see anybody.”

So back out of the Winter King’s Ice Age Bachelor Pad and across the way to the only door that has light coming out from under it. Tiptoeing’s a little silly now; Tungsten points out they clearly know we’re here.  He proposes we just knock.  Klajdu offers the only insight worth writing down:  “More trick. Klajdu hate trick. Friend say: come sit, come drink, come eat leg of mutton….”.

Tungsten knocks and after a pause a voice answers, slightly surprised. We’re invited in. Bold as brass, in we go.  Are we sure this is a good idea?  No.  No going back now though.   It’s a big room dominated by 2 forges that glow with an icy blue fire.  Next to one of the forges is a big tiefling who’d been doing the talking.  He’s holding a blade in the fire but he takes it out and turns to us as he talks.  A huge Ogre in the corner on the left is looking bored and picking his teeth as he sizes us up.  Two more of those big skeletons are standing nearby.  Nobody’s excited yet, the skeletons do not burst into flame, so hey this is great we can all be friends.  So far so good.

“My name is Anger and I work for the Winter King”, says the tiefling.

“Oh good, Anger.  I know this word”, I say before I can stop myself. I blunder through the conversation.  Honestly I can’t remember what I was saying but it sounded good at the time.  I very nearly let on that I’m carrying Ice Scepter, but with a kick from Tungsten I manage to backpedal down to something like “We seek an audience with the Winter King.  Ahem.”    Apparently this can be arranged and audiences with the Winter King are freely available.   Klajdu tries to strike up a conversation with the Ogre but it’s a tricky conversation to start. He offers once or twice to perhaps even have a wrestling match with the Ogre.  The ogre continues to pick his teeth. I have a bad feeling that our team may get a chance to take this ogre on, and soon, but I keep my mouth shut.  There’s a vision I can’t shake of my shinbone becoming a giant ogre toothpick. Anyway, there’s fortunately no time to dwell on nasty images.  Anger is leading us off to see the Winter King.

So we walk with a bit of a swagger, back through the corridors we’d been sneaking about.  Doors to the antechamber are thrown open again, and the doors to the Winter King’s throne room.  It’s just as cold, just as icy, just as creepy.  The bridge over the frozen river is still there with the voices warning us to beware the wrath of… yea yea, we got it.

We’re carried along in the momentum.  It’s a nice simple idea — we just fulfill our mission, give the thing back and we go home. We walk up to near the throne and there at the base of the steps we kneel as instructed.  The King is encased in ice about a foot thick but the enchantment was laid so well that he is still able to move around just fine.   He wastes no time beating around the bush and the pesky topic of the Ice Scepter comes up right away.  Out of some scoundrel instinct I try to play it off like we don’t have it on us.  However this didn’t seem like the winning move and the conversation was clearly about to take a pretty dark turn.  “Oh you mean *this* scepter”.   I sneak a glance at the skeletons but no they haven’t burst into flame yet.  We’re all still friends.   So…. we just give this Scepter back, the grip of winter recedes from the Nentir Vale, and we go home, right?    The room is still.  Four chandeliers worth of ice candles flicker.    The Winter King reiterates his interest in regaining his scepter, but doesn’t exactly pick up our enthusiasm about removing the current blizzard conditions from around Fallcrest…  Oh shit.  You know, the talking boat never really did spell out what would happen if we gave the thing back.  All it said was that if we *didn’t* give it back, something even worse would happen.  The Winter King does express one other interest and it takes us off guard; he wants us to join his army.  Yep, that’s right kids, we can be at the vanguard of the Winter King’s army as it expands to put all the lands of the world under his icy grip.  Oh goody.

I try to put some professional distance into the whole thing.  “You know, that’s a nice offer. This is a nice place you got here and I see you’re putting together quite the team, but you know we’re just passing through and we dont want any trouble. In fact if anything we probably cleaned things up a bit. Carn may actually give you an invoice for killing the Otyugh in your kitchen.  He doesn’t usually do pest removal so that was kind of a big deal.”.  Carn picks up the bureacratic angle and points out that we couldn’t accept the new contract without at least looking into the details.  Neither approach seems to have an effect on the King but I try to keep up the momentum. “Why expand your empire into the lowlands?  Why not expand to the south where it’s already cold?  Seems much easier to me.  Why subdue troublesome valers when you can expand up into the mountains?”   This seems to set the king back and there’s a strange cracking sound, as if from the ice that encases him.   The King shakes it off and points out that the other mountains are no more free of hostile forces than the Vale and to the Vale he will go.  Dammit.   Tungsten bravely blusters that we would stop him if he tried that. The king is so taken aback by the half orc’s bluster that he cracks again.  I seize the shift in momentum and say “See, you don’t want us in your army; We’re a little unpredictable!” and the crack in his side widens slightly.

Whatever it is we’re doing, the King doesn’t like it.  “I’ve had enough of this!” he yells and yep, now the skeletons burst into flame. Oh great.  Even better, I’m standing next to the king because of course I just gave him the scepter.  What a great idea that was. Tungsten and Marco run up next to me to take on the King. A few chips of ice fly off from where the blows land but that’s about it. The King shrugs it off, stands up and charges right through us all, knocking down Marco and I.  He keeps on barreling through us, making it halfway across the room and takes a huge swing at Klajdu but it strikes Klajdu’s shoulder guard and does no harm.  Meanwhile on the other side of the action, Fitz is taking on the Ogre and a skeleton throws a fireball at Beulah whose cloak catches a bit of fire at the edges. Beulah and I both are of the same mind and we unleash whatever might push the Ogre into the frozen river or pond or whatever behind him. Beulah’s thundertusk boar strike misses but my curse lands, and I do a little dance because I’ve never actually managed to land this particular curse and it’s a fun one.  The Ogre, in his mind, thinks he’s surrounded by the mocking laughter of nightmares. He staggers back shaken to the core and of course falls backward heavily onto the surface of the frozen pond, which to our great pleasure, shatters. Fitz, seeking an opening in the King’s guard yells out “you storch!”, which makes no sense but gets repeated around the party eventually turning into ‘use torch!’.  Aha!  Not a bad idea but nobody gets around to this because the ice really starts to come off the king with all these blades sinking into him.  Klajdu goes into some kind of barbarian trance and starts bellowing about how the King’s skull needs to be made into a fine cup and chased with gold.  A bit grisly perhaps but most excellent. I add in a bit about how the Ice Scepter would make a great Swizzle Stick.  Then things get blurry.  I think Marco places one of those sneaky winks again because a skeleton suddenly throws a fireball at the Winter King just as he was freezing Fitz in place with a blast of wind and ice.

Then the Beulah and Shazia show is on. I don’t know how she does this but Beulah fires three arrows faster than I could see. Two for the Winter King and one for Ogre, all with her cloak on fire.  Then having stolen the show she gives her cloak a little flourish and snuffs out the fire. It’s a tough act to follow but I land two nasty curses on the Winter King, one of which sets him on fire.  Fitz’s ‘storch’ idea seems to have been a good one because the King doesn’t really seem to like being on fire.  And he likes it even less when a few seconds later one of Tungsten’s axes separates his shoulder from his neck and just like that, we ain’t got no king to kick around anymore.  He goes down and tungsten neatly grabs the scepter and the creepy crown of ice.  We may need that.   At this point, just like the river porters say, it’s all over but the shouting.  Some fireballs are thrown, some warlocks teleport about, some axes gently remind some skeletons that they’re supposed to be dead.   Klajdu was fighting one of the skeletons when he saw Anger turn and bolt for a side door.  He turned back to the skeleton right then and shouted disdainfully in the skeleton’s toothy face “Skeleton of Poop!”, and then raced after Anger instead. That was pretty much it.  The skeleton’s went down and Fitz and Carn amused themselves briefly by kicking their skulls around the room.  When Klajdu came back then we gave a cheer when he told us of catching up to Anger way down in the King’s bedroom and burying a greataxe in the tiefling’s back.

My hand is cramping a bit and I think I’ll have to write the rest down later.