After the battle in the throne room we explored a little and discussed a little. Klajdu had found a magical key around Anger’s neck so I took a look. It’s magic seemed to relate to something back down the big hallway so off we go with a stop off at that Forge room first.  Beulah was pretty feisty, I’ll say that.  Maybe this fight was a bit more frantic than normal and she was still coming down.  More later.  I wasn’t going to put on the Winter King’s crown just yet but then when nobody was looking I did it.   It’s got at least 2 powers but I haven’t used either one yet sadly. It’s maybe a bit strange that I’m carrying *both* of the magic items that we’ve found, but until someone else brings it up….  And we discovered that the magical forge imbued our weapons with an icy frosty bite so everyone got a little something, for now.

Before I forget them, some quotes:

Shazia:  “Something’s gonna happen with this crown.”
Tungsten: “Yea, you’re gonna fall and break it.”

Beulah: “What else can you put in the forge?”
Klajdu: “Image of unwelcome.”

Marco told us he felt he’d done his part and took off. He said he’s not going back to Fallcrest at least and that’s probably for the best. They’d kill him if he’s lucky which he’s not. He didn’t want any gold or any anything so whatever.  Beulah was pissed at me for putting on the crown. I guess she’d said she wanted to wear it.  Gave her some wine and then shortly after some more.  We found a storeroom with thousands of books and scrolls and codices and I would have never left except that the scrolls were all thawing and rotten and dripping.  Not my day. Beulah found a minotaur’s horn that had been turned into a flask and damned if she didn’t just drink it down right away.   Took a while to find out what magic we were dealing with. (you’ll see).

Beulah drank more of my wine after which there was some puking.  At first I thought the wine didn’t agree with her.  We break down another door and come face to face with a small army of frozen warriors with a white dragon frozen and suspended in loose chains from the ceiling. Winter king had some cool toys I see.  The dragon had a key around it’s neck and I reached up and took it.  Another great idea cause the Dragon immediately thaws and attacks.  I considered briefly trying to put the key back but all I could tell was that this key was related to the other key so we’re gonna need it anyway.

There was some kicking of ass. We got the dragon on the run but a charge from Klajdu, a taunt from Carn, a blast of vomited fire from Beulah (aha the potion!) and a somewhat spastic burst of magic from myself and the dragon went down (I tried to use the crown but instead managed to teleport twice with some wind magic in the middle. Played it off well I think as long as nobody reads this journal).

More quotes:
Tungsten, regarding the idea of just massacring the frozen people:
“We’re not barbaria…”  {looks at Klajdu}   “Oh.”
Klajdu, addressing the thawing people:  “Make first left, second
right. If you hit room with sausage you go too far.”

One more extremely-broken-down door later and we’re in a room packed of traps but the traps are all frozen in a sort of half-engaged position. There’s a lever that Fitz and Carn try to snag from across the room but not today.  Then Tungsten makes his way through the room to find next to the lever there’s a trick lock and a riddle. Four tumblers.  Something about dwarven and giant being written in the same script. I get distracted cause when they say tumblers I naturally assume they’ve found a bar over there.

Suddenly there’s the sound of a lot of booted feet approaching behind us. Aside from Fitz and Tungsten who are in the trap room, we all turn to find some humans that I think wanted to talk to us, and an Ettin that wanted to kill us, twice.

We make with the asskicking, but in a rearguard action drawing them back into the trap room. I figure out that there’s no bar, but I head that way no less eagerly.

I’ll skip to the truly awesome part.  A maniacal half orc throwing the actuator lever this way and that while a baker’s dozen of different traps spear, impale and saw our enemy’s to little quivering bits.  At the end I wanted to clap and throw some coppers at them but they were on the verge of death and thus unlikely to take this magnificent show on the road.

And I’ll leave you with more quotes:
Shazia: “I’m beginning to feel sorry for the Ettin”, after Ettin’s leg
gets mostly sawed off.
Fitz, at his most un paladin-like: “I will steal life from the bloody one.”
Klajdu, after being compelled by Carn’ibald to reach around and attack
a barbarian: “What if Klajdu not want reacharound?”

Tungsten:  “She (Beulah) can teach you, but Carn’ibald would have to
charge”.  You had to be there. Or even if you didn’t, I’m not
explaining it.’

Someone. maybe tungsten:  “What kind of an animal are you? You’re just
going to urinate on him?”

{the following is narrated by a disembodied voice}

Our intrepid band of adventurers took a time out in an ancient dwarven treasure vault where they took a brief rest, ran a few diagnostics, and applied a bit of healing magic. But there were just a few unopened doors left and time was wasting (and it had really only been a couple hours since their last long rest, to be frank) so they decided to venture back out and press onward.

They deactivated the traps in the outer room and kindly disempaled the carcasses of a couple of the last set of unfortunates to come after them. As for the loser in the pit trap–they considered the full menu of unkind solutions to his dilemma but in the end listened to his appeals for clemency and pulled him out, minus weapons. He proceeded to hotfoot it for the door at the far end of the corridor. This was as clear an indication as any that that was indeed the WAY OUT.

But there were several doors yet unopened along the way to the WAY OUT and they provided far too much temptation for our gang of six. They wandered down the hall, past the room of still steadily thawing minionsicles, past the pile of cold, scaly meat that was once a mildly fearsome white dragon youth, and stopped at the first of three unopened doors.

Now, some time earlier, back when certain frosty sorcerer-kings had yet to be shattered into tiny pieces and a particularly nasty flame-key wearing tiefling named Anger was happily in possession of his head, our merry band of bravos had been lured to this door by a somewhat random gnome; he claimed that there was a Winter Queen being held prisoner behind it and she was in desperate need of saving. Unfortunately for the Queen, charity hadn’t been high on the adventurers’ list of priorities at the time. The entirety of the Winter King’s cairn was basically a meat locker, they surmised. She’d keep.

This time they stopped and listened. Listened hard. And heard a woman weeping and intermittently making hoarse, whispery calls for help. Also, somewhat incongruously, loud snoring. It was hard to say how the two were connected. Just to be thorough, they listened at the next two doors down the hall and heard nothing. Weepy snoring room won…they just had to figure out what was going on in there….

There’s probably no need to belabor the events that transpired next. After Klajdu forced the door open, our dungeoneering tiger team found themselves in a room full of jail cells. A sickly-looking woman–the Winter Queen, evidently–and a young boy were locked up in one, several others contained corpses, and a huge featherfurred thing lay on the floor in an offal-scattered cage in the corner, apparently deep in slumber. There was a bit of conversation with the Queen that ended rather abruptly; she asked that the adventurers return the deceased king’s magical artifacts to her now that her mean old husband was out of the picture, and they politely demurred (well, ok, maybe not “politely,” but with about the limit of finesse expected of half-orcs, barbarian goliaths, paladins named “Fitz” and of Beulah, who really just wanted to make living pincushions out of creatures that annoyed her). And so the Queen called for the other creatures in the room to attack them.

Surprise! The corpses were in fact grasping zombies. Double surprise! The thing in the corner–a very light sleeper, as it turned out–turned out to be an owlbear whose abysmally bad attitude was likely in large part due to the fact that the Queen apparently insisted on calling it “Hootie,” as in “Hootie! Attack!”

The battle that followed was a pretty rough one for our heroes; the owlbear kicked things off by stunning Klajdu into position with its “dazing hoot” (ridiculous-sounding but effective) while the others quickly discovered that grasping zombies happened to have a talent for, er, grasping and grabbing their opponents. And then by and by the “Queen” and her “boyservant” or whatever it was supposed to be turned out to be a couple more illusionist gnomes in disguise. Surprise cubed! Or maybe not.

That last development was rather obnoxious, as gnomes have a tendency to multiply and cause havoc with their blasts of dazzling light and blinding psychic bursts. But after a rather hard-fought battle and a few strategic adjustments, the assailants were vanquished. The daring dungeoneers took quite a beating, with a couple teetering on the knife-edge of tragedy, but in the end all were victorious.

Pushing on, our fearless adventure-seekers decided to find out just what the ice and fire keys were about. For the past few hours Shazia had been periodically dangling the ice and fire keys from outstretched hands, dowsing for their sister locks, and he knew they were getting pretty close. In fact, he was pretty sure that if they just took this side corridor down the hall….

And so they rounded the corner, and lo and behold…another set of doors, about twenty feet into the corridor. And even from a distance it was obvious something about these portals was a bit off. They were just a bit *blurry* perhaps, and there was a sort of sheen to them, as if covered by something translucent. A few feet closer and they were better able to sort out the doors’ condition: they were covered by a layer of ice…ice that oddly *wasn’t* going along with the rest of the ice in the cairn and getting on with the business of melting away.

The party approached the doors cautiously, with Tungsten and Klajdu in the lead and Fitz and Cairn right behind. Shazia followed while simultaneously taking Lock Positioning System readings, and Beulah had the rear, her ever-ready arrow positioned to let fly as always.

A pace or two from the doors, an odd thing happened. Two hands and a face erupted from the frosty surface of the ice about three feet from the ground. This sudden appearance gave Klajdu a bit of a fright, and he reacted the way most goliath barbarians do in such situations, which is to repeatedly pummel or stab or cleave whatever alarms them until they their composure is restored, or the offending thing is dead, whichever comes first.

But just as Klajdu and Tungsten’s axes raised up and Beulah drew the string back on her bow, Fitz hollered “Och! Hold ye fire!” He’d instantly identified the ghostly figure as a dwarven priest. The dwarf was gesturing towards the party with a sad, beseeching expression, arms reaching through the door in a way that was not much unlike that of a prisoner pleading for clemency through the bars of a jail cell.

The diminutive ghost began gesturing at a keyhole in the ice just to the left of his head. His lips moved silently and Fitz puzzled it out for a moment, realizing the dwarf was repeating two words in Dwarvish. “Um…mice knee?” Fitz translated, not having a lot of experience with lip reading in that particular tongue. “No, wait…oh, lice fee! Lice fee? Who has lice? Tungsten? Is that to pay to get them or get rid of them?”

By that time, Shazia was already fitting the ice key into its lock. “Gods, I can take a hint,” he muttered. One turn and the ice shattered, falling away from the door in chunks. The lock mechanism turned with a satisfying chunk, and Shazia pulled the doors open with ease…only to find another barrier behind it: a solid wall of ice this time. In fact, it appeared that the entire room beyond was filled with it.

“Another hole for key!” Klajdu yelped, and it was true. “Well you don’t need to be an designer of pyromancy-propelled high-speed flying machines to figure this one out” Shazia said as he slid the fire key in. This time when he turned the key there was no click, just a sort of hissing pop as the ice magically transformed into cool fog, taking both keys with it.

They were left with a room that appeared to be an ancient dwarven temple to Moradin. The corpse of a priest, presumably frozen in place for centuries, was still kneeling before the altar, as if the room had been instantly filled with ice while the dwarf prayed, all those ages ago. Moments after the fog cleared the room, the adventurers saw the ghost of the priest stand up out of the kneeling body. The spectre turned to the group, now smiling grandly, and bowed deeply before fading away. At that moment an overwhelming sense of health and good feeling washed over each member of the party (all lost or spent healing surges were instantly regained).

Beulah and Shazia gave the temple space a once over, checking for hidden panels and magic, and quickly ascertained that there wasn’t much else of interest in the room. So it was back the way the came, out from this side corridor to the main hall, which led ultimately to the door out of the cairn. But before getting there the team checked the last two remaining doors, in the interest of thoroughness.

One of these two doors was already ajar; it led to a small room that held what may have been an alchemist’s library–lots of tubes and beakers and complicated boilers such as one might need for the creation of this or that elixir. It looked like the place had been clumsily ransacked by a few of the fleeing ex-minions, but the party still managed to scrounge up three healing potions. Unfortunately the potions were still frozen rock solid; to use them they’d have to thaw them or chop them up into bite-size chunks. They decided to wait.

The other door was locked, and a sign carved into the ancient wood read “Do not open on pain of death by order of the Winter King.”Ha!” Klajdu exclaimed, when this was read to him. “Winter King in no shape to order coffee, let alone death of Klajdu!” He then wrenched the door open, as he is wont to do.

This bold action revealed a guard chamber, ten feet wide and twenty feet long, with alcoves and another set of doors at the end. The room seemed empty, but as Klajdu and Tungsten entered things got sketchy quick: the room frosted over, and nasty shadowy things spilled out of the walls and ceiling at the far end of the chamber, near the opposite set of double doors. The moment our guys approached further, the attack was on.

It wasn’t super pretty; the wraiths were insubstantial and didn’t seem to take much damage at first, and they were pretty good at chucking whoever came at them backwards while dealing psychic damage. But gradually the creatures were worn down. It turned out the guardians were protecting a 25′ x 25′ room with a huge circle of mystic runes engraved into the floor. After several minutes of careful inspection, Shazia was able to determine that it was an active teleportation device but it only functioned as a destination, not a starting point. He couldn’t work out how to actually operate it; those instructions must lie elsewhere.

The party went back out to the hall, to open the final door, the door out. As they did, they became aware of muffled thundercrack-like sounds and shouts and screams. They appeared to be coming from outside the mountain cairn, on the other side of the aforementioned WAY OUT.

Fitz got to the doors at the end of the hall first; he opened them and beheld the “welcome banquet” room that had been their introduction to the cairn, rotting food on the tables, dead dire wolves, and all. The door across the room was wide open, and through it could be seen bright light and a whole lot of commotion–people yelling, others laughing, figures running to and fro.

As they approached this exit they heard another loud crack of electric discharge, quickly followed by a howl of pain and a fair amount of scattered laughter. Then a loud, booming voice intoned. “Only the one who wears the Winter Crown may board!” A familiar voice.

“Hmm. Sounds like someone’s trying to steal our ride,” Shazia said.

“With not much success,” Klajdu replied.

As the adventurers filed out into sunlight and fresh air, they immediately noticed several things. First, the weather and landscape had transformed dramatically. The sky was blue and bright, not a cloud to be seen, and the snow that had been thickly blanketing the mountaintop had vanished. Spring flowers were poking above the rocks, waving in a warm wind. Atop an escarpment of stone, the sky ship rested, sparkling like a gigantic diamond…it had been transformed into solid ice!

Arrayed in front of the ship were the dead and wounded bodies of several of the Winter King’s former associates, while off to the side a handful of other ruffians stood by or sat on boulders, taunting those who were attempting to take the ship.

“C’mon Tharg,” one of them shouted to a scorched-looking warrior-type who was trying to get up off the ground. “You almost got within 10 feet of it that time. Third time’s the charm, surely!”

As Tharg readied himself to take what would almost certainly be his final run at the sky ship, Carn’ibald cleared his throat, getting the attention of the rag-tag collection of unminions. Even Tharg, as senseless as he was after suffering multiple lightning strikes, managed to sense that something odd was afoot and turned around to face our brave heroes

Things got very, very silent as the party began walking towards the ship. The former cairn residents didn’t seem to be terribly interested in taking the party on–apparently word had spread that they had rather efficiently vanquished nearly every living thing set against them in the cairn, even the dragon. Now that they were released from the Winter King’s duty they had their whole lives ahead of them. (Though apparently a few weren’t bright enough to avoid a ship that doled out punishing bolts of lightning to anyone that tried to climb aboard uninvited.)

“This should be interesting,” muttered a vaguely wizardy-looking dude when the adventurers entered the ship’s kill zone. “Watch out! It bites!” Tharg bleated, eyes wide.

The party paused at the base of the escarpment. The ice ship’s dragon figurehead tillted down towards them and said “My magic is fading, like a snowflake in summer’s sun. The wearer of the Winter Crown can take me on a final journey. But hurry, time is short.”

With that, Shazia stepped forward and pulled the hood of his robes down to reveal the Winter Crown on his head. The onlookers behind them made various sounds of astonishment and Tharg bleated again: “Awesome!”

Shazia, Klajdu, Beulah, Tungsten, Carn’ibald, and Fitz took their places on the air ship and began to row. A few of the former minions shouted as the ship started to rise, pleading for passage off of the mountain. It wasn’t long before their whining voices were lost to the wind.

The return journey back to Fallcrest was far less eventful than the one that had brought the group to the cairn. It was also faster, and far more beautiful. As they rowed home they each took time to reflect on the beauty of the world beneath them, and appreciated the kind warmth of the sun, shining on them once again.

At Fallcrest, the sky ship touched down on the banks of the river Nentir in almost exactly the same location as before, near the camp of the Turnfin halfling riverboat merchant clan. It began to melt almost instantly, and the adventurers clambered off in a hurry. It was lost to the sun and surging river currents within twenty minutes.

Once the residents of Fallcrest realized that their saviors had returned, a great cry went up around the city. The adventurers received a heros’ welcome. The new spring and summer had already brought unprecedented harvests and the town was more beautiful than ever before with dazzling flowers and bright greenery. An impromptu celebration broke out in the streets with citizens struggling to lift the likes of Klajdu, Tungsten, Fitz and the rest on their shoulders (Beulah made a “point” of refusing this treatment that was well understood), handing them food and drink all the way up to Moonstone Keep, the Lord Warden’s residence, where the festivities continued well into the night.

The townsfolk were true to their word about free lodging, goods from shops, mounts (though they’d also taken fine care of Carn’ibald’s steed, which was left abandoned by the side of the river back when this all began), and so on. Remodeling work had already begun on the Tower of Waiting in the river, and in about a month the adventurers will have a fine home in Fallcrest. In addition, the results of the heroes’ actions had so exceeded the Lord Warden’s expectation that he gave of them a Level 4 magic item [dm note: I’ll determine just what he gives soon] and 500 gp as an addtional reward.

We’re headed back underground. Of course. No romps through enchanted forests, no subtle intrigue in floating castles. No, both the evildoers and their treasure remain down in the deep dark.

More specifically, in Saruun Kell which is a sort of underground town beneath Thunderspire mountain. We have several reasons this time, although now that the shrieking in my head is back I’m no longer sure they’re sound.

#1) there’s a 1000gp reward to either stop the Duergar abductions or return with proof that they have stopped. In case I suffer a bout of amnesia let me get all this down — the astute reader will remember our Blood Reavers and their Chief Krand whose friendly note we intercepted in the keep on the Shadowfell. Krand spoke then of his “Duergar allies under Thunderspire mountain”, and how those allies were always looking for fresh humanoid captives. Based on the troubling frequency with which merchants and travelers have continued disappearing from Thunderspire and its environs, one wonders what exactly the Duergar are doing with all these people. Worlds largest Nentir square dancing pageant no doubt. Horrible stuff. Must be stopped. The motion is carried.

#2) Valthryn is eager to hear any firsthand info, artifacts, carvings etc, of the ancient ruins around and beneath Saruun Kell. He’s promised to teach us a pretty high level ritual if we can satisfy some of his curiosity. Nobody else seems quite as interested as myself in picking up a high level ritual. I feign surprise at their lack of feigned interest.

#3) Get out of Fallcrest for a while. It was only a matter of time before this crew stirs up trouble there, so this is a good thing.

#4) personal just for me — the ancient ruins below Thunderspire mountain are really not that far from certain other ancient ruins under, say, the Old Hills. I’m hoping for some leads or some history or both.

The history we know so far — apparently after a rich and risky period of dungeoneering, the top level of Saruun Kell was cleared out about 20 years ago by a group calling themselves the Mages of Saruun. Now there’s a reasonably safe area called the Seven Pillar Hall. Apparently it has a permanent market. If you believe the besotted ramblings of Fallcrest barflies, there is also a permanent tavern. Oh and some shrines. Erathis and Ioun. Could be worse.

——————-

Well we left Fallcrest in company with a caravan that was returning to Hammerfast empty (so they say), but we only travelled with them a day and a half. Midday on the second day we cut away north towards Thunderspire. The path was relentlessly uphill, cobbled after a while, but always steep. After a bit we came upon huge and ancient statues of minotaurs flanking us, and then not long after that the path went under and through an ancient arched entrance 50 feet tall. Ah, the dank. As ever, the shrieking witch, aware of my return below ground, fills my head with a constant stream of improbably cruel elven curses.

After a while the passage sloped down and narrowed. We passed magical sconces at regular intervals and at the beginning some strange demon statues as well. A while after there were no more statues but there were various side passages to both left and right. We continued straight. We heard noises ahead. Reavers discussing what to do with a captive. Someone in the party (who shall remain unnamed, at least in this chronicle) had an idea which seemed fabulously clever and turned out to be cheerfully pointless. To make a long story short our blades are wet again, our cloaks mildly bloodstained, and we’ve rescued a halfling called Rendell Halfmoon. He told us no doubt a great many interesting things but one of those things was the nearby existence of his family’s tavern, the Halfmoon Inn. At least until I get used to the shrieking again, I find it difficult to focus on anything else.

Writing is a thirsty business. I’ll write more later.