Allessandro the Protector

Our adventure began on May 8, 2024 and ended one year later on May 28, 2025. It was a great year of gaming once a week on Wednesday nights.

Allessandro, aka Alice is a Goliath from Bryn Shander, but he travelled to Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, and other places along the Sword Coast where his religious studies led him to becoming a Paladin of Helm with the ambition to be a member of the order of the Vigilant Eyes of the God.

On a stormy night in Baldur’s Gate Alice received a vision that called him back to Ten Towns to bring an end to the cold and darkness.

Bremen

We start in Bremen, we have been here for a couple of years. At the Grumpy Moose tavern. Alice has joined up with a group of like-minded adventurers who all are bent on ending the eternal frost. Kavac is a female half-orc with many talents, Fierra is a tiefling with some odd thoughts on life and death, Snacks is the our little dragon-ish cleric of the night, Sylphine is an energetic fairy full of questions the desire to hit things with her oversized mallet, while Jon is strange guy with a lot of things going on. Oh, and then there is Derek, a ranger-ish type that is a bit of a mess.

We are approached by a lady offering us work. She tells us that things in the Ten Towns have been going down hill. She says there is something big lurking in the waters of the lake. The creature is big enough that fishing vessels have been going down. Maer Dualdon is the name of the lake. She pays us 5 gp each as a down payment.

She is looking for more information about the creature, maybe get a sample of it. Her name is Cassmina or Cass.

We get two row boats and head out to the lake. I tie a rope and stick to Sylphy And have her dip into the water every now and then as we row around. As we do this a large fishing boat makes crashing noises and starts to sink. We head for it.

We sea a serpent like tale in the water. It’s dropping scales and off of its body. There are a few sailors floating in the frigid water. Sylphy picks up some of the stuff in the water including a crystal and uses the rope and stick to begin rescuing one of the sailors.

I row a little closer to Sylphy and the sailor and then grab some scales and crystals from the water. As soon as I pick up a crystal I get a pain in my head so I drop them into the bottom of the boat and the pain immediately stops. Sylphy grabs some more specimens and drags a sailor onto the boat.

The other group is rowing away as fast as they can and we do the same.

As we leave we see the larger fishing ship drop a barrel into the water and then it explodes and some fish float up.

We get back to Cass and give her the bits and pieces we found. It appears that she had a bet with the Habor master that we would die. She takes one of the crystals, gives us each 10 gp, I hold on to Sylphy’s share to buy trinkets with later. Sylphy is not interested in gold, but wants trinkets.

We go back to the tavern and Cass is there with maps. She thinks the crystal has something to do with the darkness and cold infecting Ten Towns. I carve up a couple of the “Young Sea Serpent Scales” with drawings of Sylphy and I on the rowboat and a portrait of myself. I give them to Sylphy as her payment.

Kava studies on of the crystals and learns a little bit, but not much.

Cass says her brother has another task for us involving a missing person in East Haven.

Targos

We rent some sled dogs and equipment for the trip and go to Targos. We turn in the dogs, all that goes well. The town cryer says something about missing researchers at Kelvin’s Carin. We see a strange man walking down the street, he is wearing a long coat and appears to be made up of 3 sections. He turns around and has the face of a kobold. As soon as Snax talks to him 3 kobolds shoot out from under the coat and run in every direction.

We go to the cryer and ask about the missing researchers, he tells us Sven is looking for them and tells us where to go. He is making potions. We talk to him about a job, he wants us to go to the top of Kelvin’s Carin and return with samples. He offers to rent us dogs to get there and back. He gives us some generic mountain climbing gear. It is going to take us about 12 hours to get from Targos to Termalaine to Kelvin’s Carin.

Termalaine

The town cryer here announces that black gems found in the mine, and then that the mine has been closed due to takeover by kobolds. We all look at Snax. He tells us that they employ the kobolds in the mine, but recently they revolted and have taken over the mine.

We would rather go on to Kelvin’s Carin, but that will take 10 hours, so we decide to go check on the mine before going to bed.

We go to the inn to learn more. The foreman who went into the mine to talk to the kobolds and never came out is a dwarf. The speaker, Orkas Matthews, is a half-orc. Fi try’s to pull some shenanigans but the party calls her on it, but she talks him out of 60% of the reward up front.

We head to the mine with our borrowed dog sleds, it takes an hour to get there. We get to the mine, it is a basic hole in the ground. There is a sign outside that says “Kobolds only, no on else allowed.”

Before going in Snax blesses me with enhanced dark vision. As we go in it gets very dark but it is getting warmer. Once we get in a little ways I start calling out. Looked at the floor and found rat and lizard tracks. Fi uses her raven and dark vision to see a lot further into the mine. We continue deeper. We get to a bottomless vertical shaft with a rickety crosswalk. We get across and there is a bucket for lowering us down. I volunteer to be lowered first, it looks to be about 50 ft down. Fi sends the raven ahead and doesn’t see anything special.

As we walk down a path Snax gets attacked by 3 kobolds. Snax, Fi, and Kavac kill one, subdue one, and the last one runs away to tell “Trex”. Then Kavac brings the dead one back to life.

I give the guy one hit point and we start asking questions, he doesn’t know about the foreman. He tells us Trex has wings. He says the kobolds are afraid of the miners. He says they have been here about a week. His name is Grek. We tell him to take us to Trex.

In an alcove we find a Mind Flayer skull with a crystal shard where its brains would be. Kavac reaches in and grabs the shard, he hears voices in the far off distance when he holds it. It is a psy-crystal, if attuned to it will give him telepathy. Into the next room is a lot of Geodes and in the middle is a large black metal-like formation, floor to ceiling.

From behind the rock a kobold comes out with fake wings. He asks what he can do for us. He says they have not seen the foreman. He says that when they came into the mine the miners ran away and did not fight. I ask if he would be willing to come up to the top and speak with the speaker of the town to see if they can work out a deal with the town.

Grek has a bag on his waist that appears to be strongly magical. Fi charms him and try’s to talk him out of the bag, but it doesn’t work. Fi is a bit upset by this.

We walk up with Grek and 5 other kobolds. Snax gets attacked by a Grell once he is by himself. He does a great job beating them up and we are able to attack them from above. Kavac harvests the Grell for parts.

We get topside and load the kobolds up on the sleds to get headed back to town to talk with the speaker. Fi distracts Grek and The Face sleight-of-hands the bag from Grek and is possessed… Snax is able to cast Sleep and Fi digs through his stuff to get the bag. She also finds a holy symbol of bahamut.

A ghost forms next to the satchel and ask Fi what she is doing. Fi makes some kind of deal with the creature in the satchel. The creatures name is Janeth.

We head to the tavern with the kobolds. We explain to the speaker that we believe the foreman was killed by a Grell. He says that he will have to talk the other townsfolk into being comfortable with the kobolds. He gives us the remaining 40 gp from the contract. He also gives us food and drink for the night. We get a good nights rest.

We are going to head out and check on Sven‘s research team. 5 hours of travel but get snowed in by a blizzard. Some of us go to the local magic shop to see what they have. Kavac shows the proprietor Ben a black crystal, he says it is magical but very strange. I trade one of my crystals with them for an Everbright Lantern. I have 1 black crystal left.

Kavac takes his to the potion shop to trade.

Kelvin’s Carin

The blizzard ends and we head out to Kelvin’s Carin. There is a sled at the base of the mountain with dogs still tied up to it who are upset and hungry. We feed them and straighten out the sled.

There are crates where we find crates with rations. We get the dogs set up and begin climbing.

Derek helps lead us up. After we make it up a ways there is an avalanche, we hunker down and it passes. But now something has happened and where Ten Towns was there is a huge White Castle. We climb up some more, find corpses of researchers. I search through them and don’t find any personal items to take back to their families.

Fi sees a flower that she has been searching for further up the mountain at the entrance to a cave that also has smoke coming from it.

I give the last crystal to Sylphy so she can get 1 common magical “trinket”.

Back to climbing.

We come upon a shimmering wall of rock that we are able to walk through. There is a howling wind and crackling of a fire. It appears to be a normal ice cave.

In a small opening we find 3 bodies, and on the floor and ceiling are ice spikes, in the middle there is a ring on the top and bottom with pointing to a large floating black crystal in floating in the middle. Derek takes a shot at it and it moves a bit but nothing else happens.

Then mephits come out the walls and attack then the crystal moves around and blasts a freezing cold cone. Then sylphy whacks it with a maul and it explodes.

Two of the bodies are alive, Snacks gives them some hit points and they are feeling better but they are exhausted. They say they are researchers but they don’t know who would have sent us to find them. They say that they think someone is trying to merge the material world and the fey wild.

We spend the night in the cave and when we come out is snowing, but it is not a blizzard. We make it to the bottom without much drama. But the researchers sled and dogs are gone. It looks like they also tried to take our sleds, but they were secured better. It is going to take us about 10 hours to get back to town of Termalaine.

We get caught in stronger snowfall, but still not a blizzard. Then the ground starts shaking like giant stomps. Kavac is able to see a mammoth being ridden by a giant. I try to hide.

Sylphy goes out to talk to them and it is a Frost Giant who talks nicely to her. He says he is hunting a dragon named “The White Death” and he offers Sylphy the chance to join him in future hunts.

We rest up and continue on. About 4 hours out, the weather has let up a bit, and we are approached by another sled. They are a group of drugar and they demand all of our crystals. The fight ensues.

Sylphy surprises me by growing larger and larger until she is a large creature. She stands by my side and starts smacking on a guy in front of me.

Kavac does a big thing and the robed guy is destroyed. Then Sylphy takes out the guy in front of me and he turns out to be an automaton.

Termalaine

We kill them and get their 4 dogs and sled. Then we make it back to Termalaine but when questioned they do not know who Sven from Targos is and why he would be interested in the researchers. She reads Ryans mind and says his name Nass Lantonir and she loosely works with him. He is a divination wizard. She says that Nass is after her and is using us to follow her, she has something he wants. She says we need to go to East Haven and talk with her brother.

I’m going to take care of the dogs. I buy enough rations for myself and for the dogs along with snow shoes and crampons.

We head to Targos on the way to Brin Shandair. We investigate an empty house that appears to have been Nass’, in it Snax touches a crystal ball with then cracks and shatters. Kavac finds a pouch with 300 gp. Sylphy finds a picture with a family in it and none of them are Nass. Snacks freaks out a bit and I go out in front of the house with him.

Kavac also found a cloak of protection which he kindly gives me, I attune to it ASAP!

Then we move onto Brin Shandair where they want to do a human sacrifice to help alleviate the winter cold. “Aurel” is a minor god of harsh winters, she rules out of fear.

We hang out with Kavac’s family, they feed us and such. There is a lottery to pick someone to sacrifice to Aurel, no one we know was picked.

East Haven

Then we move onto East Haven. As we arrive the town has gathered to witness the execution of Casamier’s brother, they have found him guilty of killing people. Turns out Casamier’s brother was a former red wizard and he was responsible for killing people on an expedition.

There’s a tower outside of town where they captured Casamier’s brother. We make our way out there, it is in terrible shape. We walk in through the rickety front door. Not much on the first floor, I climb the ladder up to the second floor.

Willie’s sister Fierra sends her raven up to the third and then the fourth floors. On the fourth floor, the top floor, there is a guy rummaging through treasure. I confront him and he changes into Sven. I move to throw him off of the building and end up falling through the floor all the way down to the second floor.

Fierra talks with the bad guy, a human wizard, Nas Lantimere. She says her goal is to kill the god Aurel and the death of some citizens are inconsequential. She has an orb that she got from Casmina. She works for the Arcane Brotherhood.

She says she needs to find the Canonical of White. Shenanigans happens and then she dimension doors away.

Sylphy looks through the telescope. It is pointed at a large black spire in the distance to the east.

In the chest there are some books including research books on the Netherse… something or other and other history books. Then we hear the militia bell ringing in East Haven.

We head back and are told that someone is attacking the Town Hall. Once we are closer we are told we can either chase the assailants or investigate Town Hall. We follow their tracks and find them carrying a large statue of a devil lord made of black crystal. There are 4 large Drugar carrying the statue. They are headed to the closest exit from the town.

We do our best to stop them. After Some fighting they drop the statue, shrink in size, and run away. The statue is of a major devil of the ice level of hell. I use my divine sense and determine it is desecrated but is not actually a fiend. Sylphy touches the statue and becomes paranoid, Fierra shrinks the statue and Sylphy is able to take it back to the Town Hall.

The head of the town says they were hiding the statue, we think maybe we shouldn’t leave it here. We decide to go to Bryn Shander with the statue. We captured one of the Drugar and are going to interrogate it.

He says his king is Sunblight and they are agains Aurel The Frost Maiden. He Says they are making a beast that will destroy the Ten Towns and and kill the Frost Maiden. He says they will have an army soon. We turn him over to the townspeople to lock him up.

A crier announces that ten people were kidnapped from Bryn Shander. We are going to head there to try and get the statue un-desecrated. Kavac’s mother was one of the people kidnapped.

Bryn Shander

We have made it to Bryn Shander with the statue and give it to the people at the temple to un-deconcecrate and protect it. They say they will.

We find tracks of the kidnappers and they lead us towards Kelvin’s Carin. A blizzard hits and slows us down. We make it to the backside of Kelvin’s Carin in the dead of night, it is pitch black.

Snacks gives us darkvision for an hour. Fierra uses her bat familiar to scout ahead and finds a Drugar in a bunker. Sylphy gets shrunken and goes in through an arrow slit. The Drugar was able to see some of us, we’re not very stealthy. He gets taken out before he has a chance to hit us.

Fierra sends the bat down the tunnel and it finds a full armory, enough to arm a dozen. Further along there is another Drugar pacing. Outside the party opens the main door and we find cages with goats and a rotting Ogre that is alive. We rush to fight the Drugar with Sylphy.

We defeat the first guy, a construct shows up and we start beating on him, Marty sees an invisible Drugar, Kavac finds a room with a bunch of cells and townspeople in them. Kavac’s mother is in there.

We defeat all of them and capture a robed guy who says in Undercommon that he is the sun of Sunblight and if we mess with him we will rue the day. I grab him and shackle them up where Kavac’s mother was being held.

Kavac saves his mother and Casmena. She tells us she is sorry for lying to us. Nas left her for dead and the Drugar picked her up.

I collect a crossbow and 100 bolts.

Marty and Kavac find the commanders quarters where they find a spell book, a note about a ferry in East Haven and a guy named Nildar, and color changing lantern.

Valene Harpell is Casmena who is a Necromancer. She raises the dead Drugar to pull her sled.

We decide to put up the drawbridge and spend the night here. We cook up a goat and get a long rest.

In the morning Sylphy starts acting strangely evil, as soon as I notice I give her a pair of manacles and yank the dark crystal crown from her head. She returns to “normal.”

Valene says that she was here to find magic and arcane things, they believe that a Netherene city was once here. While they were searching the never-ending winter started. She has lost an item that let her read Netherese. She thinks Nas has it.

They believe the Netherese city is buried under Reghed Glacier. They think that getting into the city will give them a way to defeat the Frost Maiden.

Still in the outpost, Jon interrogates the prisoner with Marty’s help. He says that they are going to take over the Sword Coast and rule above ground. “Our Master will let our King rule the world.”

Valene uses Detect Thoughts and she recoils in horror, all she sees is a man trapped in ice. They are working with the dark lord Levestus, they want to attack an island to get the canonical of white.

Brin Shandar

We travel to Brin Shandar, the statue is no longer desecrated, the fence will give us 500 gp which we immediately spend on a dog sled and dogs. Our reward for bringing back citizens is 1,000 gp.

Sylphy buys some studded leather armor 2 healing potions. I buy 1 healing potion for myself.

On the way to somewhere else we stop in a town and meet with the speaker of the city. She gives us nice warm cookies that work us up and give a tiny bit of health. She tells us there is a white moose that has been attacking people.

We go out looking for the moose but it doesn’t show up. We spend another night and find the moose, its antlers are glowing. As we approach it, it runs off. As we follow it the woods twist and become more like the fey wild. We hear an owl hoot and see above us 3 owls with horns. We are unable to get closer than 100 ft from the moose. Then we see shimmery sprites, they are trying to talk to Derek, but they cannot be heard. It seems like they are a mirage.

We loose the moose but find fancy spot with a gazebo and sarcophagus. I think about my religion and don’t figure out much other than a relation to Selune. Kavac talks to the person in the sarcophagus. He tells him that he was killed by the Pale Prince, a winter fey. He leaves the sarcophagus and says to lead the way.

Sahune is the name of the mummy. We turn the dial and the platform descends 40 feet then the a room comes out and covers the opening. Then there is a night sky visible on the walls and ceiling. There are constellations on the walls, one of them opens up. In it is a room with a large tablet covering a wall that talks about Selune and the phases of the moon.

Snacks moves the arrow again and the constellations on the walls rotate around exposing new ones. After moving it around a bit the decorations on the floor of the moon phases pop-up a little. Snacks steps on one and the phases rotate but nothing else. Then I step on one and it rotates again, I move to another and when it finishes rotating there is the mirror constellation and a new room is open.

I look into the mirror and see stuff reflecting my desire to be a member of the Vigilant Eyes of the God.

Blah, blah, blah, they open another door and find The Pale Prince’s domain… they quickly close the door. Sahune tells us that he was a part of the Pale Prince’s court and that the prince’s betrothed turned him down and that made him so bitter and upset that he turned away from the summer court to the winter court and became a bad guy.

Something about the Pale Prince not wanting to be in the material plane, but he wants something that is only available here. Derek seems to know a lot about the Pale Prince.

In the next room is a glowing chest. Snacks immediately jumps in and touches it and takes a lot of radiant damage and the sound of breaking glass. The chest is no longer glowing. In the chest is a +1 Moon touched long sword. Kavac is going to hold onto it tonight, but we may offer it to Sylphy later.

The next room is tiny but full of shelves with jars and the smell of death. Fierra goes in there and investigates the jars. They are full of organs. Kavac finds one of the jars is glowing, it is full of blood, and is abjuration magic.

Next room… more abjuration magic and a sarcophagus. It is Eamar, Sahune’s lover. On the plaque is “Even in death, we will be together.” Derek tries to enter and finds he can’t.

Fierra tells Sahune. She has the idea of coming back later and raising Eamar for Sahune.

Sahune says that we can call on him in the future to help us.

We head out and go to the Speakers house to tell her about the moose. She offers us a run-down tavern as a reward.

Black Cabin

Then we head out to the Black Cabin. The terrain gets rougher. It takes us an entire day get to the Black Cabin. It looks abandoned and in bad shape. I check out the outhouse and find torn notes being used as toilet paper. The notes are about the Netherese. Fierra uses her raven to look into the cabin. There is an incinerated corpse in the room. Then there is a burst of light like the sun and the raven is toasted. It may have been the weather device we are here to look for.

In a workshop room we find smith’s tools and tinkerer’s tools. In the main room I get out of it and move the next room where I find calligrapher’s tools and a scroll. Kavac picks up the scroll and investigates it, it is a note about a guy wanting to go back to Ten Towns and take a break. He mentions the summer star.

Snacks goes into another room and find a clay statue of a tiny man. It is a dead homunculus.

The next room is a bad bedroom with a broken window and a lot of snow.

Jon steps into the far side of the room and the floor breaks and begins to fall away. Derek is able to save him with his bees. Then we see footsteps appear in the snow. We think it is the dead guy whose corpse is on the floor.

I slide into the last room and all I find is wine. Snax comes into the room and says the ghost is upset we are messing with the barrels. I leave.

On the corpse Fierra finds and Amulet of Health that is the shape of Amon Tore.

Back in the room where Snax found the statue Kavac finds blueprints on how to make the device and how to fix it. The ghost wants us to do it here at the cabin. Snacks picks it up and brings it to the workshop. Snacks figures out that 2 rings are not enough and a third ring needs to be constructed.

Fierra gives the creation of the third ring a try and is able to do it. Fierra also attunes to it and can now use it to control the weather. It allows her to cast the spell “Control Weather.”

The ghost really wants Fierra to activate it now. She wants to save it. We pack up the ghosts body and when we step outside there is a magic blizzard. Fierra decides to use the device. We see 6 horned owls spinning around in the blizzard.

As she activates it, it vibrates and levitates into the sky. 300 ft up boom and for 5 miles around the cabin for 8 hours it is summer time. We still have the blueprints to build another one. The ghost is now gone.

We now have the Blessing of the Morning Lord which gives each of us a little more life every morning.

Off in the distance we see a large bird flapping its wings and headed our way.

The big bird appears to be made of ice. I hear a celestial voice in my head that tells me to trust and follow the light. There is someone riding the bird, it is an Ice Roc. As it gets closer, the air gets colder, sharply.

The creature riding the Roc has an owl face with horns and a glittering cape. I use my Devine sense and determine that the owl thing is celestial and god-like.

Jon talks to it, apologizing about something. An avatar of Amon Tor appears and tells us to run as it attacks the owl Who is Aurel. They go up and fight while a handful of mephits show up and start fighting us.

We defeat them all and head for the dogs. The gods are still fighting over us. Aurel does something to Amon Tor that causes him to drop. We rush to help him and he uses his last light to teleport us away with our dogs and sleds.

Jon throws another fit about being in the sun. We are on a glacier, we head towards a place that may give us some shelter from the oncoming storm.

On our way there we see a heard of animals crossing our path that are being followed by a tribe of people on sleds pulled by large animals. They are the Elk Tribe.

Aurel is a minor god of harsh winters and she wants to become a major god. She is fighting other gods to gain enough power to be a major god.

Jon admits to us that he had an agreement with Aurel, he talks with Kavac a bunch.

Along the way we find a goblin who has a map to a goblin outpost of the opposite side of Ten Towns. I bury it and say some nice goblin words over its body.

As we approach the spire, it is a 20 foot round mound made of black rock with a protrusion sticking out. We search the area and find a tunnel into it. We do some ritual casting and head on in with a bat leading the way.

Once we get down the rooms are upside down. There are statues on the ceiling and the door is 4 feet up and ajar. I climb over and find a door into a workroom. Sylphie goes digging through everything and finds an iron key. Then onto the next room. There is a metal chest stuck to the ceilin, it’s locked, but we have a key. Kavac sees 4 objects of abjuration. We get it open and there are 4 potions, of resistance, Acid, Cold, Fire, and Force ( I take the potion of Force ).

Across the hall is a room with books and a tunnel going down. There are 3 books about Netherese stuff. Then we go down the tunnel. There is a table on the floor and a corpse of the Thrikine, they are astral travelers.

I figure out that this was once a ship of some kind.

Into another room, there are 2 cages, it looks like this is a dissection room(s).

The next chamber down is a wizards workshop. Sylphy flys down and Derek goes down. We make it down there and find some scrolls. There is a scroll tube of scroll preservation and inside is a scroll of invisibility written in gold leaf.

Three is also an alter with the symbol of Mistrul.

Snacks opens a door and there are 2 guys in the room, they turn and look at him. One of them is undead. The living guy welcomes Snacks and says he is here to study. This is the guy that guy that got burned at the stake, he is a simulacrum. He says that they believe that there is a device here that can take an illusion and make it reality.

He says the device is on the next level down. They have heard something down below, but they don’t know what it is. Lucky flys down there and finds 2 basilisks.

I put on a blindfold and drop down to the level with the Basalisks and rest of the party fights from above. They kill one of them and the other runs into another room. Fiera and other party members come down, Fiera looks at the basilisk and begins to petrify. There is also a large insect in the room.

I find the Rune room which includes the device.

We defeat the basilisks and investigate the rooms. We find an invisible treasure chest and inside is an ancient spell book that crumbles to dust as the air hits it. We collect the permanently invisible treasure chest. Fiera also collect 2 eggs and stores them in the chest.

Fiera and the ranger run out of the tower while the rest of us hide and wait for it to leave so that we can help the simulacrum become a person. The creature crashes through the building and goes after Fiera.

We go into the room with ruins and activate the device for him. A wizard appears and says a bunch of stuff we don’t understand. He steps into the space and Snax activates the machine… and he disintegrates and the ghost becomes inert.

To our knowledge the chamber has a chance to work, but something went wrong this time.

Looking for magic items on the petrified figures. Jon finds a pair magic boots, but they are petrified along with the person wearing them.

Zhent Bandits

We head up and see that Fiera and Derek have taken Kavac’s murder bird and run towards East Haven. We get the dogs ready and follow them. Along the way we see bandits, they are dragging a Ten-Towner and we decide to try to rescue them.

And the fight is on, it is 5 barbarians that have been infected by the dark crystals. They are able to attack us 3 times in a turn. It is a slow slog of a battle. Their crystal weapons poison us. I am able to take most of the attacks protecting the rest of the party. Eventually we taken them out.

We see in the not so distance a large carriage being pulled by bears coming towards us.

Derek yells down from the carriage, I go up inside with him. They are Zhentarum shady folks. They tell us that they will take us to Revel’s End. Jon has a heated conversation with the Zhent leader, I do my best to ignore them. The guy I meet in the bar is talking about a traitor, when I ask for more information they really don’t have any more information.

Fiera talks with one of the leaders and they admit it is a Dragonborn, but they don’t say a name.

Kavac and Jon are in a room talking with the Zhent leader, stuff happens Fiera fires a couple of knock spells, the door opens and Jon is lying on the floor. Kavac tells us he is ok and for us to hold on. Meanwhile Snacks is in another room and he figures out a puzzle that opens a cabinet and a dead body falls out that looks a lot like Jon.

The head Zhents name is Emerick. He wakes up Jon and gets everyone to calm down.

Emerick get the construct, Jon hides somewhere, and the construct is brought out and the announcement is made that Jon is dead and Emerick killed him.

Some other stuff happens and we leave the carriage before reaching Revel’s End. I get out and start unloading the animals and sleds.

We are headed to Revel’s End to find a big bad guy that may have information about how to stop the winter.

I summon my Axe Beak steed for the first time. Their name is Beaky.

In the distance we see a large round structure with a tube sticking out of it. Like a large size igloo. We see a mammoth walking into it. We avoid it and go to a Zhent shelter to get a long rest.

Giant Igloo

In the morning we decide to go check out the igloo. Sylphy and I go into a side entrance and find a frozen orca and a chest. Kavac find a handful of cold light walkers (undead) in another room.

Snacks goes in the main entrance and sits on a big chair he finds. There is a hacked up frozen frost giant. While snacks is sitting in the chair there is magical wind blowing around him and he hears in his mind the giant word for “go.”

Sylphy sits on the thrown and says the word “ice” and a storm starts surrounding the igloo, as soon as she gets off the thrown the blizzard dies down.

In another room is a giants bed roll. The next room has barrels of whale oil and some materials that can be used to make potions of cold resistance.

Sylphy find the ghost of a small human child hiding its face and crying. It turns around and is missing its face. It says “it is coming” and disappears. Then an undead frost giant is in the thrown room.

We defeat the frost giant skeleton quickly and 2 townie glowing guys walk in and the bright light they bring with them wreaks havoc. After a long fight we find a magical brass warhorn with a ruin on it that says “war.”

Jon figures out the warhorn is something for protection when blown any fear disappears and our armor increases, it is a “Warhorn of Valor”.

Jon heats up the frozen chest and finds some carved bones.

As we are leaving we see some Griffons with riders in the sky.

Revel’s End

We load up the sleds with 1 barrel of whale oil and head out to Revel’s end. The road to Revel’s end is quite hard. We take the Mountain route. As we move along a blizzard is coming. There is an avalanche concern. We stop at an overhang to wait out the storm.

I get hit on the head by a rock dropped by guys on birds above us. Derek says they are Parrotens. Then we get attacked by 3 crag cats coming up the trail. 2 of the cats and one of the birds get killed the other 2 leave.

Derek harvest the cat and gets 9 pounds of food. 2 cr1 magical parts.

We finish our rest and make it Revel’s End. It is a very large place.

We go to the main entrance, they say we need to turn over our weapons and stable our animals before coming into the visitor area. We wait there for the commander. She comes into the room and we explain why we need to talk to Prisoner 237 and she shares that he may be insane.

We are taken into an ant-magic zone and the prisoner is in the room reading a book looking smug.

The prisoner is named Falish Gant. Jon begins asking questions. He wants some entertainment, we are thinking of the books we picked up at the Library, but have to get them approved by the warden.

The warden is in her quarters up in the tower. We go up and blah, blah, blah something about a ghost inhabiting the warden.

We go to the kitchen, the rest of the party is looking for drinks.

We spend a bit more time with the warden, choose to give them the fiction book, and it takes a full day for them to go over the book and get it ready to give to the prisoner.

We try to take a nights rest but an alarm goes off in the middle of the night. I jump up and start putting my armor on. Once I get my armor on I head out and find a dead guard, I take his long sword and find Drugar fighting with guards.

After a bunch of fighting Fiera overhears the Drugar Prince free his “brother.” Eventually all of the prisoners are set free and roaming the prison.

Gant is trying to get out of the anti-magic zone. We run into Gant in a hallway. The warden shows up and tells us to take Gant to the interrogation room we were in earlier.

Gant tries to escape, casts Sleep on Derek and climbs up a ladder, I grab him and pull him down and sit on him and wait for the Warden and other party members.

Gant seems to know a lot, but we don’t trust him to travel with us. We leave him with the Warden and head out going to the Treasure Ship by the way of Lonely Wood where we are selling rubies that Snacks has for 300gp and party members are buying Axe Beaks.

We see what looks like some members of the Wolf Tribe in the distance as we travel, they may be following us. As we travel they are getting closer. When we stop for a rest a rider on a Winter Wolf takes a shot at Derek with a long bow and then moves away again. We head back out.

Now we see there are multiple guys and a lot of wolves and they are in a half circle around us. They take another pot shot and Derek is able to hit him.

Hour 9, traveling, and they are shooting at our dogs. Hour 10 Derek finally hits one of them enough times to kill him. But then a Winter Wolf pounces on Jon. Blah blah blah… We kill 2 of the archers.

Now we are trying to take a long rest. We’ve got the Hut with the dogs in it. I’m resting with all my armor on and cuddled up to Beaky.

We get woken up to 3 studded leather armor guys riding wolves and a wolf on its own. We start the fight. We get the first guy down ok, and a long fight… one wolf gets away.

The tribes:

• Bear – Preservation
• Elk – Endurance/li>
• Tiger – Isolation/li>
• Wolf – Cruelty/li>

I kill the guy we captured and turn him over to Fierra. We search the other bodies, they all had a Cloak of Elvin Kind. The cloaks look like pelts of winter wolves and are a signature of the Wolf tribe.

We mount up and head out for another hour. Along the way we see that there is a magical blizzard between us and Lonely Wood. Up on a hill we see a nomad in bear skins and we decide to go say hi.

He is traveling the way we came from. He greats us, we tell him to beware of the wolves and he says that they will leave him alone. We ask him a lot of questions. He sounds good to travel with us for a while. His name is Ontuk. We head out and continue traveling toward Lonely Wood.

We get through the hour and get a short rest. Hour 16 another travel hour, the magical blizzard is 2 hours away. We wagon up and try to take a long rest. 3 hours in Ontuk tells us that we are being attacked. We fight the guys off and get a long rest in.

The blizzard is still there, it’s 4 hours out and is staying in place. It looks like it would be an extra 4 hours of travel to go around it.

We tie each other together and head through it with Ontuk’s help. We hear metal scraping ice. We see 2 black eyes staring at us. It is a visage of Aurel watching us. Ontuk says she has taken an interest in Derek. Then everyone starts seeing things that are our personal fears.

Aurel speaks to us and says she can change it all. The blizzard subsides.

Lonely Wood

Just outside of Lonely Wood we go to the tomb/mirror…

We go to the Divination Mirror, the door is still open to the Fey Wild, the mirror still has 2 brazier’s lit above it. Sylphie asks the mirror “What is your favorite chocolate?”, one of the flames goes out and it does not answer as the mirror doesn’t know about chocolate.

Jon asks it “How do we find the island after it moves?” And it shows him 2 separate pathways, one with a whale that has a boat on its back and another is a tribe of people raising griffons in the mountains. The final flame flickers out.

The griffon people are at a place called Sky Tower. The Goliaths bond with griffons for life.

Now in Lonely Wood we are selling the 8 dogs the kennel’s guy agrees to buy them. Everyone except Sylphie now has an Axe Beak.

Sylphie buys components and she spends all night making me a Flail with the symbol of Helm on it and a copy of the trinket with my face on it. The handle is a giant bone with carvings along it.

In the morning we head out to find the SOS that Kavac heard. We stop off in Brinshander for a bit then on to Dougan’s Hole, a tiny desolate village. Then on into the mountains.

The Mountains

Up onto a plateau, the mountains appear to be broken unnaturally, trees are flattened, the damage is not recent, probably within the last year. There is an obvious lack of animals. The SOS signal is getting stronger.

In a large clearing there is a crater with a Nautiloid. Kavac teaches us all about Mind Flayers. The ship doesn’t look too bad, it should still fly. As we get closer Kavac hears words from the ship saying that it needs help.

There is a Clay Golem walking around on the ship. On the outside are a number of carrion crawlers. They attack us and the fight is on. We kill them fairly easily.

We climb up onto the deck of the ship. Jon wants to approach the Golem and have a conversation with it. The door opens and “Intruders, Intruders.” In the room there is the Clay Golem and 3 squidlings. Fierra fireballs the kids killing them. We fight the Golem for a bit then a guy comes down the stairs and tells the Golem to stop.

He tells us that they crash landed here and need a psy-crystal to take off. It is a Gnome Ceremorph. He says they have been out here about a year. There is a lot of talking and we agree to give him the crystal for trips, a helm of telepathy, and eyes of minute seeing.

Our next stop is Brinshander.

Alice was out of it for awhile and when he recovers…

Drugar Fortress

The party has just stepped out of the Fey Wild and we are close to a fortress and behind us is an army of Drugar that want to take over Ten Towns and make it their new twilight domain.

The current task is to get into the fortress and destroy a big weapon that we believe they are going to use to destroy the Ten Towns.

The main entrance is 100 feet up. We spend the night in Snax’s hut and then make our way up to the entrance. We hear a scream and a Drugar falls from the top of the fortress.

Sylphy flies up to some windows and hears a lot of big hammering and chain dragging sounds. Inside she sees a lever. She goes in and tries the lever and here’s something move.

Derek opens the front door and behind it is a portcullis, it raises slowly. Down the hall there is a tall figure, a Mind Flayer, with the dark crystals as a blindfold. It floats toward Sylphy and then floats back.

Then Derek does what he does and the alarm is sounded. I move into the room and see the guy who announced “intruders” through an arrow slit. I also cast Bless on Derek, Jon, and Snacks.

There are 6 or 7 Deurgar attacking us. After much fighting we defeat them.

Kavac sends a familiar to scout ahead and find the room making the loud hammering sound that is shaking the fortress. He sees a room with a conveyor belt feeding the hammer and then taking its product away. There are Duegar engineers and hammerer’s along with slaves of many different races. The slaves are wearing chardalyn collars that are biting into their necks. Also in the room is the heart of a red dragon beating. Above is a red dragon made of crystals and dark iron, something picks up the heart and puts it into the dragon (Mecha-Godzilla). Kavac uses minor illusion to show this to us.

Snacks stumbles into a room and finds some stuff. Most importantly a map with a dragon figurine on it. He removes the dragon without looking at where it was on the map… but there was a base left of the map and when a lever is thrown it shows a path from place to place hitting all of the ten towns.

There is also a stone chest, Jon gets it open and finds treasure and a scroll with a number sequence on it in Dwarvish. But then there is a click and a gargoyle on the wall begins spewing a poison gas and the only door to the room is locked.

On to another room, the one with the lever, there is an elevator shaft.

Another room has a big table in it and a desk. Nothing of interest.

In the next room Kavac hears people talking and eating. A female voice calls out and says she knows who we are and that we are out there. She is only speaking in Dwarvish, she tells us to come in and relax. There is pseudo-dragon make of chardalyn.

She talks to us a lot. She doesn’t care for the king but won’t really help us. The prince also has 2 sons. There is also a training room somewhere. She is supposed to become his wife. There is a tunnel through the under dark to get out through the prince’s throne room. The other elevator is in the training room.

She also tells us that if we shout her name while in battle some the Duergar may stop fighting us. She teaches us how to say her name in a way that may get her people to fight on our side.

On to another room there 4 suits of plate armor and 3 dummies without armor. As soon as Jon enters the room the 4 suits of armor animate.

On to the next room we find the guy who kidnapped Kavac’s parents . Kavac starts working on him. I end up executing him.

In the next room a tiny Duergar makes Sylphy attack Kavac.

Stuff going on in the room down the hall with Kavac, Sylphie, and Jon. I’m still in the bed with the dead prince in it. I make my way into the room and find them fighting a mimic chest and a tiny Drugar. I help with the chest and the rest of the party takes out the Drugar.

We move on to the elevator by the entrance and send 4 of Fiera’s skeletons and her familiar up. One of them comes sailing back down and pops when it lands. Sylphie, Fiera, Jon, and I go up in the elevator and find 2 enlarged Drugar waiting for us at the top.

We take them out and begin exploring. The area is very loud with mechanical sounds. I open a door and a mechanical Drugar attacks me, Jon and Derek take it out quickly. The next door is more of the same.

The next room is much bigger, it is a shop for making and maintaining the constructs.

Back in the workshop Jon finds a Slick Shot (15 feet of rope that pulls you, towards large things or small things to you (like spider-man)).

In the elevator rooms there are levers to open the hatches on the launcher shaft. We make sure they are closed.

We go back to the middle floor and formulate a plan. Jon, Derek, Sylphie, and an Uber Skeleton get in the elevator to go down. It is 200 feet down. We all get down there, it is a small room, lots of noise from machinery. Jon opens the door and there are 2 Drugar just outside the room.

When they see us they choose to ignore us As they are the Lady’s men. We “sneak” past them and find ourselves in the Throne Room. There is a bunch of fungal folks in here.

There is a Micoden Sovereign here and 4 Quagoth. There are several bodies hanging from the ceiling, Humans, Dwarves, etc… with crystals pierced into them. We want to save the Micoden. As I enter the room Fiera super-sizes me!

As the fight goes on 4 more Quagoths come out of a side room and attack. We eventually defeat them all, the Micoden dies along with one of Fiera’s skeletons.

On the other side of a door we hear armor and weapons moving and gathering.

I open the double doors and step into the ext room and get flambé’d, I step back and tell the party. They open side doors and find 4 Drugar. We kill them and through slits in the walls can see other Drugar and slaves mining. After a bunch of talking I push through and attack a spider with a rider.

After the spider dies I get spells cast on me that causes me to attack party members. Lots and lots of fighting… we eventually defeat them all in this area and we try to figure out how to free the slaves.

They talk with Averus and she says she wants the Codigal of White from the glacier to get access to the Mithal city to give us more information about how to get to the island.

We head on to the next area looking to free some prisoner/slaves. We find a Goliath Warrior Kappanuck, he wants to return to his clan. Then a human from Dugan’s hole, we set him free also.

Avery’s repeats her offer… we don’t take her offer… yet. Alice is very focused on stopping the never ending winter™, but doesn’t want to make deals with Evil to get it done, but if other party members make the deal he would not stop them, but he would not be a part of the contract.

Averus is trying to free Levestus, Levestus is all about the chardalyn, and the Drugar are mining and collecting the chardalyn.

On her way out Averus gives us a key to the door to the forge, but tells us that we will need a second key to open it. On the door are a lot of Dwarvish Ruins glowing with magic.

Snax goes to another door down the way, inside is a statue made of obsidian, chained to it is an orc whose body is almost all made of crystal. A Drugar comes out and tells us about Deep Dora and the orc.

Kavac figure out something is up and I use my divine sense to determine that the Drugar is actually a fiend and the room is desecrated.

After more investigation it turns out the Drugar was a high level Devil. Livestus was using the Drugar for something.

They did a lot of fighting, there was a bunch of treasure, a glowing rune that is a key to the forge.

We break the jar and are enveloped in a bubble including Fiera’s skeletons. We are in an extra dimensional pocket. We get a long rest. We have the 2 keys we need to get into the forge.

We stealth up and begin heading to the forge, we can hear the heartbeat. The skeletons open the door and it is a 30 foot hallway to another door.

We go through that door and find the King, 2 hammerers, a mind guy, and 6 slaves. We take out the mind guy and one of the hammerers pretty quick. Chains come out of the walls and grab ahold of me and pull me towards “the chute.”

I break out of the chains… turns out when the dragon’s heart gets attacked the chains pull anyone attached to them.

Blah, blah, blah. The Sunblight has been defeated and the Drugar threat has been resolved. The Sunblight lineage is no more.

Goldoffa tells us that Ten Towns is safe and that we are welcome to use the forge. She tells us that there is an Elderly woman with Axe Beaks headed our way, Vallin.

I spent a lot of time and a bunch of gold for Sylphie to make Plate armor for me. Also found a magical Shield that also expands my protection ability to 30 feet, and a magical Light Crossbow.

There was an orc chained up in a chapel but he is gone now and the desecration of the chapel is now gone.

We go up out of the keep and meet up with some guy. We learn that the directional orb is pointing at the center of Auriel’s island where the Conical of White is located.

Dugan’s Hole

We go to Dugan’s Hole and there is a mob of townsfolk outside of the town who have a prisoner they are encircling and angry with. “kill the heretic!” Fiera and others execute a plan to fake sacrificing the guy. When the guy comes too… he’s kind of a jerk, we talk about taking him to Good Mead.

Good Meade

We get to Good Meade and the people there are all talking about how great the Frost Maiden is. Fiera casts suggestion on him to help him not get killed by the locals. I figure out that the change in perception by the locals is being caused by the honey from the bees.

Derek figures out the bees are not really bees and their defense is a “persuasion honey.”

East Haven

Eventually we make it to East Haven. There isn’t anyone outside. We come upon one guy in the street, I approach and a bone devil unfolds itself from the body.

The bone devil says some stupid things, Alice is doing everything he can to ignore it and to move on with fighting the storm.

I buy some healing potions for Sylphie and I along with Arrows as backup for Derek and a Signal Whistle for the group and a bell for Sylphie.

We do some shopping and then go out to the Wizard’s Tower.

We also spent some time with Valiene, she says she is researching things, like where to take the Canonical of White. She says she will meet us in Bryn Shandair.

Hans

We are going to Skytower Shelter, where the birds and Goliaths are. It a 50 hour trip by Axe Beak. 25 miles outside of town, Derek sees odd shaped lumps in the snow. Fierra spends 5 minutes getting her skeletons prepared to fight. Turns out they are fresh killed deer, their blood is still fresh.

As Fierra begins to walk away Hans bursts out of one of the dead Deer. He says he lives “here” in the wilderness. Hans and Sylphie do some arm wrestling and drink some of Hans’s alcoholic drink. Then we notice the sled with the skeletons moving away from us no longer attached to the Axe Beak. Fierra yells at the skeletons and Hans yells, “They found out, run!”

Hans begins to escape and then Fierra casts a spell on him telling him to come back. Hans also gets grappled by Sylphie and he gets pulled by a rope tied to a snow leopard stretching him out an uncomfortable amount. I go over and cut the rope.

Kavac gets the other two to stop. Then… blah, blah, blah, Hans is elected King of Clan and leaves. We’re back on the road heading to Skytower Shelter.

Skytower Shelter

As we get closer we see Griffon’s in the air. As we get closer I introduce us and the Goliaths say that we are not welcome and demand us to prove we are not with Ariel. We show them the navigation stone and explain what we are trying to do.

After a lot of talking the Goliaths say they want help with something. We get to that village and find them playing a football game, “Goatball.”

After a lot of talking Sylphie talks me into joining her team, but the guy says we have to try-out and that wouldn’t happen today. The clan is Worm Doom.

After the game there is a dinner and party with lots of socializing. The king of the clan wants the Griffon Clan to apologize for something that happened a very long time ago. Snacks is proposing that they set up a game of Goatball between the clans and the losers have to apologize. The King says that our team will need to win a game before he would be willing to allow this game.

Goatball

Gooooooaaaaaaattttttttbbbbbbaaaaaalllllllll!

We are going against the second best team. They are the Wormdoom clan of the Wormdoom Crag.

We win Goatball but the Goliaths are not happy about it, we were boring and didn’t fight enough. The chief agrees to play the game with the Skytower Clan. I explain to the Chief that all they have to do is beat the Wormdoom Clan at a game of Goatball to get their apology and there is no doubt they will win.

They start playing and end up just fighting and doing nothing to win the game, then one of the Skytower Clan gets a spell cast on him and falls asleep. After some negotiations they agree to let Alice sub-in for him. The game restarts and Alice focuses on beating on the Wormdoom Clan players with his warhammer.

Then there is an intermission, the crowd starts a bunch of mayhem. Someone has stolen all of the goat balls. Derek tracks them down and find them with the Griffins. Derek is able to talk with them and the Grriffins say that a Goliath dropped the balls there who had a pointy crown. All four balls are deflated from the Griffins nibbling on them.

Derek and Kavac talk with the teams to figure this out which leads to all of the clouds in the sky going away revealing a blood moon. Derek yells at us all to get ready to fight.

We move towards the village and there is a guy in red robes on top of the dragon skull, it is Dazahn, an evil wizard guy. He says he has what he came for, a large piece of pure Cyrstaline Chardalyn. He says he needs it for his research on the Netherese. He sends the crystal away and says we can take him but we may have big trouble coming soon.

After Kavac does an Augury thing with Lathander he tells everyone that it is time to go. We get on Griffins and head out. We get to the Skytower Clan’s home on the edge of the weather control. The Chief sets us up with Griffin’s that will take us to the island and wait up to 3 hours to bring us back. We are now honorary members of the Skytower Clan. We fly off to Aurel’s Island.

Aurel’s Island

It’s going to take us an about 12 hours to get there. We go over the sea of moving ice, below we see moving islands and some boats. In the distance we also see a white dragon come out of the water and fly away. We come across an island in the shape of a snowflake in the ocean, it is moving.

There is a giant skull in the center of the island. Once we get within 2 miles of the island we are surrounded by fog, we can only see about 200 feet. We are here to Codical of White. The skull is at the very top of a mountain. Jon is telling us that Aurel has a butler that is a huge asshole.

We get closer to the skull. As we land a dork comes out and tells us that we cannot land on the skull and need to go down to the entrance or he will call the Frost Giant guards. We fly down and see a forest of ice trees and ice sculptures that are actually creatures that have been frozen and died.

The dork comes out and says welcome to the Island of Solstice. His name is Zaba, he is a Mephit. Off in the distance we hear a monster out roar of a Yeti. He tells us there is a survivor from a ship wreck on the other side of the island and we will pass a maze of sculptures.

We see some Amon Tor type magic. Jon and Zaba have an argument about his ”badges.” We go to see the survivor. When we get closer it is Nas and they are dead, they have an orb in their hand and there is a Spirit animal of a weasel. Derek talks with the weasel and it says the orb is very important and it talks.

Sylphie picks up the orb and Professor Scaunt starts to talk with him. I look closer at Nas and determine that he was killed by necrotic magic. Sylphie asks the professor about what as had been talking with it about and it replies that Nas was interested in a Tarasque. About every hour a bolt of light bursts from the skull clearing the fog for a minute.

The orb says that he is an expert on the Netheral. He also says he was passed down from the Narfell family. It asks to be put down, it then casts mage hand to carry itself around. I want the orb to be placed in the bottom of someone’s bags.

At the entrance to the skull there is a pair of sculptures that give us a riddle. There are 2 doors, one is doom and the other is the entrance. We spend time asking stupid questions. Sylphie opens one of the doors and sees that all three doors open to the same room. We go in.

All the walls are mode of ice full of dragon bones. On the floor is the name Grimscale in the Giant language. We hear some heavy breathing down the hall, very deep breathing. Jon opens a door and there is a withered old frost giant there sitting in a room. He says something like “finally death’s sweet embrace and starts to attack us.”

The old man hobble up to me and whacks me. We eventually knock him out. In the room is a bunch of money. We wake him and he tells us that he is the only Frost Giant left in the castle. He tells us that the Frost Maiden leaves every night to spread the ice with her Roc. Also she gets visitors of Druids and they left an awakened Walrus. The Conical is in a vault in the dungeon and to get it you must pass Aurel’s tests. Sounds like Jon already knows them. Then Derek kills him. We place his body back on his stool propped up with his weapon.

In the Feasting Hall there are stairs going up, Kavac’s bird went up the stairs and found that it leads to the top of the skull. Then back towards the entrance there is a room full of rusted out giant sized weapons. Kavac takes a helmet and puts it on the dead giant.

Then we find a decaying kitchen. It’s been a long time since there have been frost giants here.

In the next room there are ice gargoyles. They are Ice Mephits. On to the down staircase.

The stairs are slippery so I stop and put crampons on. It leads to a vaulted chamber with an Elephant sized Walrus having sliding around on the icy floor.

He tells us there is a Tomb of the Frost Giant Queen and that the vault is in the other direction. I eye Jon and let him know that I expect him to take the tests.

I have found an Alchemy Jug that is able to spew out a large quantity of mayonnaise every day!

The Challeges

Endurance Challenge

On the ice with the Walrus. Only one of the doors is lit up, it is labeled “Endurance.” “The hardest part of any journey is the beginning.”

Jon opens the door and it is an empty room. We enter the room and the door shuts behind us. We get surrounded by a small blizzard the quickly recedes and we find ourselves in Icewind Dale. There is a tribal marker with a deer skull on it. We can smell roasted Elk.

Up a small hill we can see a small tribal camp with a handful of tents. There are a number of Elk nearby. We see a chief wearing an Elk skull with large horns. They are sitting around a fire telling stories about endurance.

He sees us and invites us to join in. His wife is pregnant and about to give birth. He tells us about the Frost Father.

The more we learn the more we think we are now way in the past. The skies are clear and the Frost Father is a long dead god who was neutral good compared to Aurel’s evil.

The wife brings me an Elk Scarf, it is Cold Weather Gear.

We ask him about floating cities (they may be the Netherese) and he describes one over the frost shelf.

The chief’s wife sets us up with nice elk bedding and the elk join us to help keep us warm. The sun comes up but we don’t get our temporary hit points. We start to gear up to move on to the next location.

Way up in the sky we can see a black circle, a small black dot, the tribesmen tell us that it is the floating city. In the direction we are intending to head the sky is black and it looks like there is a strong blizzard coming.

We get started moving and for the first 8 hours everything goes great. Then the blizzard hits and engulfs us. We can only see 30 feet.

At hour 11 the elk we are following come stampeding past us. After some tense moments a white dragon bursts from the ground and swallows one of the tribesmen and knocks the pregnant down. The dragon eats all of the tribesmen leaving the pregnant woman who has been injured. Snax and I heal her up and she goes into labor. Snax helps her and she delivers the baby. The baby is kinda weird, it doesn’t seem to be bothered by the cold.

It is a baby girl that seems to prefer the cold. We rope up again and head out. Kavac becomes an elk and knows where to go.

After 14 hours we make it out of the blizzard and make it to a campsite with pitched tents. It is the bear tribe. The wife says that she is about to pass and asks us to look after her baby Aurora. She says that we have endured the harshness of winter.

The bear tribe ushers us into their camp. We become incorporeal and we see the wife on an elk with a baby be welcomed by the bear tribe, the wife is dead.

We are back on Aurel’s island. We still have our levels of exhaustion. The Endurance room’s door is no longer glowing, now the Preservation room door is glowing.

Above each player’s head is 1/4 of a snowflake probably signifying the we have 1 of 4 challenges completed.

Preservation Challenge

We then go into the Preservation room and as soon as the last person enters the door shuts and the wend blows engulfing us in our own personal blizzard. The blizzard clears and we are in a Bear Tribe camp full of dead bodies.

We hear a child crying and find a pre-teen in a tent, I think it is Arora the child from the Endurance challenge. Kavac gets on Beaky and tries to circle the camp but as soon as he leaves from one side he reappears on the other.

The child says they came in the night and killed everyone. Kavac sent up his familiar and it was immediately attacked and killed by vultures.

Blah, blah, blah, a guy appears at the edge of the camp, I run as close as I can get to him and tell him to stop right there. He ignores me and goes on by.

Then there is a cracking sound and hands come up out of the ice and grapple people. They are very hard to hit.

Then we hear a voice that says “break the chains.”

I enbiggen and grapple one of the hands and drag it 15 feet out of the ground. Then a psychic blast goes through the party and knocks some of us down and damage us.

Snacks grabs the kid and fly’s away, when they leave the camp they…. We see an owl fly away with the girl and find ourselves back in the room and the door is open to the ice rink area.

The floor is much clearer and we can see a staircase below with a pedestal holding a book with a white cover. The only way to get to it is through the ice.

Cruelty Challenge

The third door Cruelty is lit up and open. We go through the door and the swirling and we are in a small village with wolf tribe guys. They appear to be starving to death, looks like they have eaten all of their dogs.

I give them 4 gallons of beer and they fight and even kill each other over it.

The leader says they have to kill old people to eat, Sylphie and Jon both kill someone. And we are back in the room. There is cracking noises the entrance to the stairs is no longer covered. Also Jon, Kavac, and I now have 3/4 of a snowflake floating above us.

Isolation Challenge

The next door opens and it is named Isolation. We step in the room, blah, blah, blah “Rawww” tiger clan leader yells that the Frost Father has sent people to help them. We see Aura lounging bandaged up as though she had been recently injured. Aura is now about 60 years old.

Sylphie asks her about the 3 headed man and she asks how we know of him. She says her name is Aurel (like the snow god). She points to the Netherese city in the sky, it is much closer to the ground but it does look fine. We can see wizards flying around the city casting spells.

We are stuck in this camp for 80+ days and even though I am teaching everyone Goblin and all about Helm Aurel is going a bit crazy. Kavac listens into her thoughts and hears an outside voice talking to her. Snacks goes into her tent and finds it covered in writing, he has a vision where he is in a black void for years and years before snapping back. Sylphie goes in and comes out mentally and physically damaged.

Day 120 she is ripping the flesh from her face and saying that she has to leave her flesh behind to ascend. Snacks finds out there is nothing we can do. Blah, blah, blah, she is transformed, blood everywhere.

Another day goes by and Aurel is now a large winged owl-like being and flys away. We are now back in the room.

The Codicil of White

The professor, guy in an orb, is talking with us in the big room. We get everyone headed down the stairs moving towards the [Codicil of White](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/2188449-the-codicil-of-white). On the way down there are various things until we come upon the book.

I missed that an Avatar of Lathander is stuck in the ice here, I want to help Kavac and Sylphie break him out. Jon reads a ritual from the book, things begin cracking, Lethanders Avatar, a Humanoid male, breaks free but so does a Frost Giant and from the top we hear Auril as her avatar coming down the stairs moving towards us. I Lay on Hands with Lathander and give him 15 hit points.

Everything else is blocked off, we need an exit now. Lathander is waking very slowly. Kavac “reduces” the Frost Father who is the Frost Giant. Sylpine has us all on ropes and is trying to pull us all up the stairs and out of the island. But Aril wraps Sylphie in her wings and says how she is happy to see him and that we all need to rest.

Auril is trying to drag us back down the stairs. I push the button and Channel Divinity to embiggen myself and +2 my weapon.

We do make it up to the second floor but one of the pillar’s turns into a gigantic hand and grabs Sylphie who is Huge. Now there is a voice in our heads saying “I’m free, you have freed me from my prison.” From the void pit below pit below stuff is coming out.

Auril is now leading us up the stairs and is upset about what is happening. We are being led to the roof. We make it to the roof Auril takes us and throws up on onto her gargantuan Roc (bird).

The dull of the castle is crumbling and now looks like an enormous skeleton that is climbing its way out of the Void very slowly. Auril had frozen him to protect the world and now we have ruined that. She was using the power of the Sky Father and Morning Lord to stop the Void guy.

Derek gets a message that someone has figured out a way to get into the Netherese city. Auril tells us to go to the city and retrieve the [Ythryn Mythallar](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/2188403-ythryn-mythallar).

Auril tells the bird a command and those of us who cannot fly begin to fall into a magical blizzard tornado that is below us. We all fall into the blizzard. The last thing we see is the Frost Maiden sending shots into the void. We get stretched and fall into a pile a snow and Valine is asking us how we got there.

Auril used the Mytalar to capture the gods… something, something. I don’t really understand.

The Glacier

Jon uses the ritual from the Codicil to open the glacier in front of us. Then Valine sees the orb I have and wants him because he was handed down through her family for years. I give the orb with the professor to Valine. She put him on a leash.

We move to the glacier. We come upon a ship, the Professor tells us some details about it. He says many Netherese vehicles used mini Mythalars. Kavac hears crackling fires from surrounding caves.

We go down some stairs and see a tower embedded in a wall. There are Ice Mephits in the ceiling, like 7 of them. The professor tells us that the tower is constructed of Netherese magic.

We hear of a voice in Goblin coming from the tower, “I smell fresh flesh.” There is mist coming through the holes in the tower. Sylphie leads us past the tower and it leads us back around towards the tower. There is a retreating goblin that the Professor says was a vampire spawn. I try to ask it where it is going before hearing the professor.

We have found another chest and this one has a frozen lock on it. We ask the Professor about the size of the Mythalar and he thinks the one we are looking for is very very large, like building sized.

Jon is able to open the chest and finds 2 potions of Superior Healing. I take on and Jon takes one.

There is a hole, Jon drops a torch down the whole and it silently slides down. We talk about it a lot and decide going down the hole is not our first choice.

Jon finds some Draconic Script and a magic button. Jon pushes and an “arcane eye” appears next to Jon. The script says to press the button and get a tour guide to the city. We can’t see it but Jon can. He sends it down the tunnel and then into the tower…

Jon has found what looks like an iron golem head with glowing eyes. Kavac has a familiar that is also checking things out.

We go into the room with the big iron head. Its eyes blink at us. Kavac asks if it can speak to us and it blinks once. Jon names him Headwig. After a few crude attempts at communication we give up and start moving further into the dungeon.

John uses his Arcane Eye to scout ahead and finds a bunch of skeletons. Then into the next room where a bunch of shadows attack us. Fierra drops a fireball on them and kills them all.

Fierra and friends go into the cavern with frosted skeletons and feel an intense hunger. One of the skeletons has a symbol of Mystral. Fierra, John, and Sylphie have something making them hungry, they have to eat a ration every hour to keep from having exhaustion. Fierra is able to raise 9 skeleton allies.

We take a short rest so Sylphie can restore lost strength. After the rest we feel a bit of a quake. Sylphie goes down a hall and a voice comes from the passageway speaking a dead language and a Spectre comes out of the wall.

It runs through the walls a bit and causes a bunch of noise which brings vampirelings to come after us and then it gets killed and the vampirettes attack. We kill them off and move on.

There is a man with frostbite with his mouth agape wondering around. Derek throws a rock at him and he dissipates into mist.

Looking around we find a section of wall that is solid ice, Sylphie breaks through it. We find a skeleton with jewelry. There is another ice wall and Sylphie breaks through that and there is another skeleton and this one has a mantle of magic resistance (Sylphie), a crystal ball and a staff of charming made of Netherese crystal (Fierra).

Snacks grabs the crystal ball, shows it to us and it is broken.

We move along to a large cavern.

Something happened to Kavac’s familiar bat, it went out to the room and came back and attacked him before he dismissed it. The room in front of us looks like a clear ice rink.

Snacks takes a run and slides across the ice, he falls and sees in another chamber a white dragon and squeals in fear. Fiera’s skeletons shoot arrows at it and they pass right through, Kavac looks closely at it and figures out it is an illusion, I try speaking to it to persuade it that we mean it no harm and it ignores me. Also I see a 4 tentacled thing frozen in the ice. Snacks casts dispell magic at the dragon and his spell is somehow countered.

The dragon flies over snacks and breathes on him and he reacts like he was fully damaged by it but Sylphie and I don’t feel anything coming off of it.

Frozen in the ice we see a tentacled monster frozen in ice. We start moving towards it and it appears to be casting a lot of spells at us. The gravity gets reversed slamming us into the ceiling. We make our way over to the monster and start bashing our way through the ice to get to it.

Then the monster disappears and all of the magic stops. Snacks casts Featherfall on me and keeps me from getting hurt from gravity returning to normal.

Sylphie figures out that the monster banished itself and will return in 1 minute. We get out.

The Netherese City

In the next room there is a block of smooth gray-green stone without frost on it. Fierra has a skeleton touch it and it is a sticky mimic and the skeleton is stuck to it. It kills that skeleton and moves on to the next one. Sylphie flies up and starts bashing on it, Derek puts some arrows into it, Fierra casts a spell on it, the skeletons take shots at it and one of them hits and kills it.

We take a short rest and send the bat and a couple of skeletons into the next room, they see a room with mirrored walls. We move on from there into another hallway and we come across another large room.

There are trees! 6 exits. There is a female what may be a dryad. Kavac talks with her. She tells Fierra that it is her grove and that she is very lonely. We sort of make friends with her and get her permission to take a long rest here. She offers us purple pears and Sylphie eats one and then lightning erupts from her and deals a lot of damage. She says that the Netherese magic has warped the fruit.

On to the next room… the dryad stops us saying that she does not want to be left alone. She is now trying to charm us, but fails, we leave her behind crying.

Into another room, there is a giant sized spear with an obsidian tip, it is frozen in the ice, it glows with a faint cold light. Sylphie starts digging it out and Fierra tells the skeletons to help carry it out. Sylphie touches the spear and gets visions about the spear, a giant used this spear to kill a dragon. Sylphie is now connected to it in some way.

Sylphie tells us about the Frost Giant Ural that Killed an Ancient Frost Dragon by itself.

Fierra sends her owl into the next room and sees 3 priests bowing down to a statue. We get into the room and the statue looks like a high level wizard with lots of adornments.

There is a plaque under the statue that goes on and on about how great the wizard is/was. The priests are dark elves, Fierra approaches them and pulls its hood back to reveal that they are Knopix, one eyed scaly monsters.

Fierra’s skeletons shoot a knopix and it screams but does nothing to save itself. Something something something.

Averis shows up and starts shouting, she has 2 gargoyles with her. Calling one of a traitor, the ice beneath our feet begins cracking. Valine now has Jon’s backpack and the Codicil of White.

Fierra and Derek teleport into Valine’s globe of force, she teleports out and casts Fog Cloud into the globe blinding Fierra and Derek and covering her escape back the way we came.

Snacks chooses to go sliding down the ice chute and discovers it was not lava but a glowing pool of roiling red water. In the middle of it is a pile of very large eggs. From out of the water Rumoraz comes out and attacks Snacks who flies back up the chute to the group.

Derek lights it up with Faery fire and we attack it. After awhile it gets beat up enough that it runs away.

We now make our way to the city where it smells like lot rotting corpses. There are lots of tracks, Valines lead to the edge and we figure she feather-filled down. There are also a lot of Knopix tracks.

We make our way down.

Something, something, something. Up the street there is a Cloudkill that looks like a person. There is a large glowing circle moving around, it feels like a Zone of Truth.

Just inside the gate is another statue to the pompous wizard.

In the middle there is a spire with buttresses that lead to other portions of the city. To the left is a small section of city with a bunch of building, to the right is a stadium. Fierra is trying to figure out how to get the maximum number of zombies.

Averis walks off.

Kavac spots some tracks and we follow them into the city blockade. All the building are made of black marble. Every now and then there are more statues of the pompous wizard.

We make our way over to where one of the buttresses from the spire comes down to street level. As we approach we hear marching. We hide in the shadows and see humans walking/marching the city with armor, they also have green skin, they are not breathing, but they are acting like normal humans. They have 2 mages with them. We wait for them to pass.

We continue to the buttress. There is a gate with an arcane sigil on it. There is a force field keeping us from getting to the gate. Fierra looks at the sigil and sees that it signifies all the schools of magic. Fierra shoots the sigil with cold touch and the spell disintegrates before doing anything.

Abjuration Magic

Snacks see some stuff further down the way. Snacks starts wondering off and we decide to follow. We get to a smaller tower, at its entrance is a forge with the symbol of abjuration. It has a blue light in a window above. Kavac send Batty up to the window and sees a glowing anvil and 4 statues dressed as the marching humans we saw earlier. The forge area looks dirty.

Snacks opens the door at the base of the tower, inside appears to be a typical smith’s shop. He then heads up the stairs which go all the way to the 4th floor. We follow 32 feet behind him. Snacks gets to the 4th floor which doesn’t have a door.

The room is messy and dusty. He moves into the room and grabs a hammer from the glowing anvil. The “statues” who are dressed as mages, move in and attack Snacks with lightning. Snacks recognizes that they are high level constructs. We take them all out.

We find the body of a human that appears to be the mage smithy whose room this was. Snacks goes back and picks the hammer up again. A voice says in Snack’s head saying “Bring me your items of power and I’ll destroy them!”

Snacks notices an inscription on the ceiling In draconic. It reads _“First, shield thy heart with a wand from the Nether Oak.”_

Snacks uses the hammer and anvil to destroy one of the trivial magic items, on the third strike the item is destroyed. Snacks keeps the hammer but as we leave it disappears from him and teleports back to the anvil.

We decide to go look at the park to see if the Nether Oak is located there. On the way we see a barrel in the middle of the street. Fierra’s owl goes over to take a look at it. It’s a mimic and the owl is destroyed.

Takes us 30 minutes to get to the park. The branches of the trees sway even though there is no wind. In the center of the park is a large oak tree. Around the large tree there are digits in the ground. I approach the tree and politely ask for a wand. It replies in Primordial which only Kavac understands.

It is a nihilist tree who is ready for the world to end. Turns out it is Treant. He wants us to bring him a creature he can crunch and squish before he will give us a wand.

30 minutes away we find a bazaar/marketplace. In a building we see a wardrobe thrown out of a window, there is huge creature raging inside. Kavac send his familiar and finds a headless iron golem tearing things up. We figure it is the body to the head we found earlier. Kavac talks to it some more, the head is at least an hour walk away.

Out in the street there is a well, Snacks throws in a coin and there is not a splash. Then we hear movement in the well. We hear slapping of something slimy. Snacks looks in and sees a red slimy thing with multiple mouths, heads, and arms. We try to lead it to the Oak.

It is huge. It is a gibbering 5 headed aberration. It takes us 15 minutes to get back to the Treant who then attacks it. The fight goes on for 10 minutes. The Treant rips off a long branch and hands it to us. We now have a _Wand of the Nether Oak_.

The Library

20 minutes from the bazaar is a library. We head to the library. Fierra and Kavac debate on who should go in first. Kavac goes in and sees a Jackal headed guy and penguin in a leather harness. He says something about Kavac and Fierra being librarians and needing their help. The penguin and Kavac have a telepathic conversation. The Jackal says they seek a book to get them to the inner sanctum.

As we move around the library the Jackal stays right behind Fierra and the penguin stays within 5 feet of the Jackal. Kavac lets us know he is talking with the penguin about his situation and he says that he has been polymorphed from an human magician into a penguin by the Jackal and wants our help. The Jackal is only telling us lies as he is desperate to get into the inner sanctum.

Kavac does find a journal written by a survivor of the fall.

Kavac then casts Dispell Magic on the penguin and nothing happens. The Jackal was aware that it was going to happen and he let it. I sniff out the Jackal and he is a Fiend, a very high level fiend and caster, an Arcanaloth.

Fierra tells her skeletons to attack the Jackal and the fight is on. Snacks summons a celestial! After a little bit o fighting the Jackal and Penguin plane shift away. The party spends a bunch of time looking for and reading books. We leave and go to another tower.

It’s another tall tower with a broken roof. Above the door is the symbol for divination. The tower is about 40 feet tall. Fierra is casting arcane eye and sends it up to the roof to look down into the tower. There is a glass orb full of floating eyes which are able to see the arcane eye.

Sylphie “enlarges” herself and goes from being Huge to being Large. Then she goes up the stairs to see the orb of eyes. We follow her up. She gets to the orb and tries to pick it up, it seems unmovable. It is an orb oF scrying.

Kavac touches the orb and says show me the Mithilar. He gets shown the mithilar at the bas of the large tower in the middle of the city.

The clue would be on the ceiling of the tower, but it has been destroyed.

Sylphie get levitate from Fierra, floats up and touches the orb again and asks “where is the part of the roof with the words to the puzzle” and she is shown an observatory about an hours walk away.

Then she asks “where the book is that would tell us how to get into the inner sanctum” and she is shown nothing.

Accidentally she says “codical of white” and she sees Valine being followed with 20 skeletons.

And she again accidentally says Valine and her left eye teleports into the orb as she is shown the same vision of Valine with her skeletons.

The Robe Shop

We begin making our way to the observatory as it is to the left. Sylphie continues growing, she is up to 19ft. We come to a building that is in better shape than the others and it is a robe shop. There are 6 stone mages in front of the store.

Snacks goes on into the store and the mages do not react. Snacks see’s 4 phase spiders hanging out on the ceiling, they watch him but don’t attack. There are crystal mannequins wearing the robes. There is a pedestal and Derek steps onto it and a voice in his head tells him to let them make a custom robe for him. The spiders come down and begin spinning a robe around him. It takes 10 minutes and now Derek has a robe with a fully animated face of the Pale Prince with a smug smile.

Then Kavac goes in and stands on the pedestal. 10 minutes later he has a robe with a portrait of Amon Tor. Fierra casts comprehend languages to read the signs in the shop. Off the rack robes are 500gp and custom ones are 1000gp. Fierra uses her skeletons to grab Snacks and drag him out of the store.

Ahead of us is a Huge gray bald creature with a giant mouth on its stomach. It walks past us and we let it.

The Observatory

We make it to the observatory and see a hole in its roof like something fell through it. There is a group of 9 constructs outside the building. Kavac send his bat in and one of the constructs shoots it down. When we get close to them they telepathically says “Intruders be Gone”.

Fierra and Kavac Dimension Door into the observatory. There is a large blue slad inside. Kavac is able to charm it so it does not attack, he has to feed it some good berries. Fierra reduces the chunk of roof and Dimension Doors out again.

In Draconic the puzzle reads “Third, a burnt palm loosens the tongue, share a secret about yourself for all to hear.” We have the First part somewhere, but we are obviously missing Second.

Conjuration Magic

Then we move onto the next tower. It takes an hour to get there, it is made of stone. The doors are broken, there is a window on the second floor. Snacks approaches the doors and sees broom magically sweeping. Glowing orbs are set in the walls, there are giant glowing hands protecting a small little tower in the middle of the room. The Conjuration symbol is over the door.

Snacks goes inside and the hands begin moving. They attack us and we defeat them.

Kavac goes inside and lands on it, a glowing doorway opens. Sylphie reaches in and puts a finger into the doorway and poof she is gone, but then we see here in miniature standing in front of the glowing tower.

A handful of us go after her, we hear cackling from the tower. We are on a Demi-plane. We are now all medium sized in the demi-plane. I knock on the door and a voice inside says “Come in Deary’s.” Sylphie opens the door and the inside is that of a cabin in the swamp and there are 3 old lady’s making a soup.

Sylphie eats some soup and it tastes like watered down cabbage soup.

The hags are named Pinch, Pillage, and Plunder. On the wall are ”Second summon a flame in the palm of your hand.” The Hags want a memory in payment, we don’t get to choose.

We give them the memory and we leave. Fierra recognizes the Hags as Night Hags and tells us that they were fiends.

Lost memory. I cannot remember the first time I said my Oath of Devotion.

We have unlocked sections (Abjuration, Divination, and Conjuration) so far, we don’t know how many are left.

Above us we see rocks fall down and they hit a forcefield high above us and roll down the sides. There is a bubble encasing the entire city.

Necromancy Magic

We walk 30 minutes to the next tower. There is rubble with a ghost sitting on it. It says the tower broke in the fall. They say they died in the fall, they have no sense of humor. There are like 200 crawling hands on the ground.

They tell us that this is the Tower of Necromancy. They are/were an Archmage, his name is Kadrovix. Sylphie moves rubble and I help the bit I can and after 15 minutes we find his body and the riddle. Its skin is black and frost bitten. He tells Fierrra that his spell book is tattooed on his skin.

He has a necklace with 6 shiny balls on them, a Necklace of Fireball, I get to carry it for now. While I was admiring it… purple fog rolls out onto the ground at ankle height. Kardrovix says it was something he had been working on. He fades away and the crawling claws scatter.

We found the riddle and the party figured something out. Now there are 15 zombies shambling towards. Fierra tries to assert control of them and it doesn’t work. We walk away from them.

The Observatory

Next we make our way to the Observatory, close by is a theater with a lot of cages and pits like a zoo or menagerie. Snacks goes into the theater’s back room and finds a script called “The Blasphemy of Kings.” Kavac uses Detect Magic and it is Divination magic and tells Snacks to grab it and bring it back to us.

Fierra finds some written stuff and casts Comprehend Languages and the text says “you should not be here.” On the wall it says “Build your own Chimera.” We leave.

Jon reads the play… and now he is vulnerable to attacks (attacks against him have advantage, it is a curse.) Snacks casts Remove Curse on Jon and all 3 of his curses are removed.

Chronomancy Magic

Now on to an Obelisk. It is cracked. It has Runes. Fierra reads the runes and they are symbols of the magic schools, including Chronomancy.

Next tower is shaped like an axe bade. It is the Evocation tower, skeletons escort Snacks to the tower and he finds the interior burnt by centuries of destructive magic.

Kavac is still looking at the obelisk. He then comes over to the tower.

Everything in the tower is iced over, there is a brazier in the middle, Kavac and Derek go inside to try and light it. There is a frozen body in the wall. Green flame erupts. There are a bunch of stretched out gelatinous cubes inside the tower, I am just outside the door.

Before leaving the room Kavac reads the riddle from the ceiling of the tower, we now have 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.

Then a group of masked guys show up, from Levestus and say they are with Averis, and they want the codes. They say they are a part of a cult. They go away after some arguing.

Illusion Magic

Next tower, Illusion, there are eyes in the tower following us. Kavac and Fierra do some stuff and one of his skeletons dies to psychic damage. Fierra does some stuff with a rope and her skeletons. That fails, Derek tries and fails, Kavac turns into an owl and flies to the top where there is no mist.

He gets the riddle #6. In the distance we see rapid-fire fireballs in a place we haven’t been to yet. There is also another Huge creature fighting a giant zombie.

My skin starts to feel kind of scaly, like red tile scales, and I see a large eyeball with little eyeballs sprouting from it. I also hear voices whispering in my head.

Enchantment Magic

On to the next tower, frozen in ice, Enchantment college. Since I am immune to being charmed I go into the tower, on the wall are the text, “all work and no play make Idra a dull girl.” On the second floor there are empty wine bottle, written… up to the third floor written in blood is “The Crown knows all.” There is a door, I open it and there is an old woman covered in ice with an iron crown. Behind the thrown the writing “Coax a secret from another.”

Jon says something about someone stealing his weed and I tell him it may have been the lady with the crown took it. He goes in to confront her. He comes back down mad at me.

There comes a booming voice from the top of the tallest tower in a language we don’t understand. A large beam shoots down into the city and burns a line destroying everything but the undead. Every destroyed creature becomes another mob and begins attacking the zombies.

An hour later we arrive at the next tower. An ivory tower with crack climbing it like vines. Sylphie grabs Snax and throws him up into the tower. Snacks get the next riddle. Fierra goes up and they come back down with an Adamantine statue of a caster, they say we need to take it somewhere to turn her back into a person.

In the purple fog the undead cannot die. It has officially been 15 hours.

The Menagerie

Dragging the statue… Fierra needs a rest to maintain control of her skeletons. Jon decides to spend the hit points to drain his blood to “make a friend.” He pulls a lever, the menagerie comes to life, rattling, goes on for a full minute. Out of a comes a Baboon which walks up to Jon scratches its butt and sits beside him. Jon now has a familiar.

Snacks removes Jon’s curses and we get a long rest. Jon starts hallucinating even more.

We now need to fill the vat with blood to rescue the statue guy. Everybody donates some blood and we fill the vat, then put the statue in there.

During our long rest the big tower stopped shooting out rays, but when we are arguing about the statue thing a wave of energy comes out and there are now undead coming to life all around the city and they are acting like they are going about their daily business as though they were still alive.

Kavac pulls the lever. A minute goes by and a Hare with Feathered wings comes out and it is speaking and is upset. He says he was High Transmuter Metalatra.

He tells us the last word we need is “poison.” Metaltra tells us he can help us complete the ritual to get where we need to go.

Snacks finally casts remove Curse on Sylphie, she is no longer hungry all the time but she is still 20+ feet tall. We meet up at the robe shop. Fierra assigns 6 skeletons to me.

The Big Tower

Next up we are going to the big tower to conduct the ritual. We get to the tower and it is surrounded by undead. They don’t act human. They look like they’re trying to get past the invisible barrier to get into the tower.

I get bored listening to them go on and on about how to cast the ritual to drop the barrier. I take my 6 skeletons and make our way up to the front of the barrier.

Kavac casts the ritual and a door opens, but at the same moment the undead surrounding us grapples everyone to stop them. Kavac does some stuff and something/someone teleports in. It’s Valene, she teleports into the doorway and then vanishes up the tower. Then the skeletons quit grappling.

Now we go through and get into the tower. The door closes behind us. It smells really bad in here. Sylphie runs up as fast as she can and the negative energy hurts. The negative energy kills Jon’s baboons.

Up in the tower we hear music coming from a chamber, Fierra approaches and there are Netherese inviting her in, she casts Comprehend Languages and talks with them. They offer food and some Nobles approach Fierra and ask to dance.

They tell Fierra that we can’t go down a particular hallway because the master is down that way and does not want to be disturbed. They also tell Fierra that the master is a Chronomancer.

Back in a room is a magical harp playing and a chest full of fruit, there is more food and drinks.

Snacks and Jon find a suit of scary armor with a skull for a head. They run away and they are followed by the armor. Fierra talks with him, he does not think talking to the King is a good idea. Fierra tells him we are trying to get the Mythilar. He says that he is only interested in using Chronomancy to return the city to its glory. He says there is an obelisk in the city that can turn back time. We know that it is broken, but he believes that mending could fix the obelisk.

We also need the King’s staff of power which is in his study.

There was a whole bunch of talking and now we are making our way to the king by walking across an invisible walkway. We go into a star shaped room.

The walls are mirrored with niches containing gems with pent up power. An image fades in and greets us. An old man in a purple gown. Says his name is Everlast. He says it would not be a good idea to see the kind and that we can’t have the Mythilar because they need it to restore the city.

The entrance to the king’s chamber is 50 feet above us blocked by a hatch. Fierra and Derek try to go up and open it and fail. Fierra then grabs Sylphie and Dimension Door to the other side of the hatch. There are enclosed in a sphere of ice in a hallway that ends in double doors. In front of the door are 2 dark spots and a giant gem.

Fierra and Sylphie are being attacked by Living Blades of Disaster. I use Beaky and Fey Step to get upstairs to help, I cast Dispell Magic on one of the blades and it pops.

Kavac, turned into a bat and flew up shoving the hatch out of the way. We figure out that there is a glowing green gem in the ceiling. Sylphie breaks the gem and the force field drops leaving a sphere of ice. We defeat the other blade.

Kavac approaches the door and sees multiple clocks on it. Each clock has 12 different symbols on it, they do have hands that can be manipulated. Fierra figures out the puzzle and the doors open to a short doorway with another door at the end.

Fierra’s skeletons walk down the hallway and no matter how long they walk the door is still 15 feet away. Snacks and Sylphie do something silly and make it to the end and open the door. Inside that room are 8 more doors.

Each door has an inscription above it, it says Speak thy Masters Name and Enter. The doors open freely but it is pitch black behind them. Kavac can see in and sees a giant cavern.

Sylphie goes through one of the door and almost gets turned to stone. Then John says Metalatra and goes through the Transmutaiton door. The rest of the party follows.

The Chamber

We enter a beautiful room with a vortex of glowing stars. 8 chair with the schools of magic on them. Snacks runs in and sits on the Enchantment chair. Sylphie sits in another one, I stand behind them until they get bored.

Then we move onto a spindle. Sylphie is trying to move it, but it is moving at its own pace. Sylphie puts her back into it and a magic pulse radiates out and all magic stops working. We can hear things in the city go crashing down. Now the spindle is not moving on its own. Fierra casts a spell into the spindle and it begins working again and magic is turned back on.

Kavac does something and the starfield turns into a giant door. We go through the door into another room. There may be a Demi-lich in the room.

There are tables with wizard stuff on them, staircases that go lower into the room like a pit with lots of books. There is a withered old lady who looks like she has been there hundreds of years, it is Valine. Apparently turning off the magic caused her to loose a battle.

The big bad in the room tells us to leave. There is a staff leaning against the wall, it is probably the staff we are after.

Fierra begins casting a spell and the demi-lich gets upset and attacks. He bellows at us to leave and I am frightened. When I get a chance I grab a necklace of fireball bead and chuck it at the guy. It doesn’t appear to damage him but it does damage other guys in the room and sets a bunch of books on fire.

I keep dropping fireballs. More fighting, only the lich’s skull and body are left.

No longer feared. Some big magic happens and I take damage. I drop another fireball and the body disappears and is replaced by Sylphie, an angel, and a bunch of bad guys.

I am feared again. The tower shakes and most of us get knocked to the ground.

Sylphie does a bunch of damage, bookshelves rumble and open as a door, and the Mythilar enters the room.

Stuff happens and I age 13 years. Then more and I am 40.

Kavac turns into a giant eagle and grabs the skull and brings it closer to us so we can bash it.

Then the Mithilar gets upset and things in the room starts to change, time starts to speed up around us.

Snax finds a book, Kavac realizes he can attune to the Staff of Power, time is slowing back down to normal and we return to our original ages.

Fierra re-appears… there is a guilded skull of the Demi-Lich on a bookshelf. Valine is expounding to us about how we are now far in the future. Kavac grabs the spell book and gives it to Fierra.

Valine gets very excited when Kavac shows the Staff of Power. She tells us that she is from the distant path and was sent forward to do something-something. She says she was here before and while Yetheren, the Netherese city, fell.

Valine says that the Lich is her father, that her brothers were corrupted. Jon says that he read a script about a corrupt family and realizes that it was Valine’s family. That corruption is what brought the Outsider into the world.

Valine suggests we talk to the Lich to ask him to let us out or start smashing the walls.

They spend a bunch of time looking at stuff. They find a spell book with lots of amazing spells in it.

They do some more stuff, I’m distracted. We figure out that the outside world has been eaten by The Outsider and the space we are in is the only thing left.

Looking outside we can see the obelisk, the Litch says we need to go there to do the thing to save us and bring us back to our time. Kavac is trying to figure a way to get there and back.

Sylphie figures out that once she leaves the gravity well she can fly.

Something really big bumps into the tower we are in and sends it spinning in place. Derek figures out it is the Outsider.

Blah, blah, blah, we make it to the obelisk.

The runes on the obelisk are broken up, Fierra and Sylphie are working hard to fix them up.

More stuff happens and the bit of ground and the obelisk are now hurtling toward the big bad’s stomach.

The obelisk starts to glow… a rock hits Valine in the back of the head and the staff flys out of her hand. Jon uses his grapple to catch it and the staff lights up.

There is a blinding light and we are unable to see and fall unconscious.

Back to the Past

We get splashed with water and someone is yelling at us to get up and get out of the park. And we all understand Netherese now. It appears that we are back in time and the Netherese city is whole.

We ask about Metalatra the arch mage. Jon goes behind a large tree to throw up, the tree reaches down, picks him up, and throws him across the park.

As we leave the park we hear alarms and sirens. The Pharim are attacking. They are a large size creature that look like a tornado with arms and teach. They look a lot like the Devourer/The Outsider.

We come to a bunch of vendors and everything gets silly for a while. We make it to Mealatra’s place and she is happy to see us.

Jon and Kavac talk with her to try and tell her what is going to happen in the future. Derek says some stuff. She really does not want to listen to what we have to say.

Arch Mages Tower

We are going to the Arch Mages tower. We open the door and it’s a ballroom. We are looking for Valine. Derek is using Locate Object to detect The Professor Orb and it is on the floor above us.

We talk with a guy and find out that Valine is only 13 years old right now. The guy sends some messages and we are waiting for replies.

Snacks and Sylphy go find Miranda the potion person that was a brain in a jar in the far future. She gives Sylphy something and she begins to fart, and with each fart she becomes a bit smaller.

A message comes back and Iroloceus the lich arch mage will see us.

It is -335DR.

We go across the bridge then up a ladder to the mages room. The clock door is already open. We go in the room and there are a group of wizards representing each school of magic.

Fierra gives me 4 skeletons to command, 4 skeletons to keep an eye on Snacks, and 8 for herself.

The arch mage Iroloceus asks us why we are here. Blah, blah, blah. He is going to put the things together to send us back to our time. We can’t get him interested fighting the Pherum in a more serious way or listen to what we have to say about the spindle.

So we go wandering around the town. Library then lightning ball… we find a place to stay and get a good night’s sleep.

We get called back to the Arch Mage, they have the spindle up and running and see that it is doing stuff with the weave. I propose the idea that the spindle is feeding the Pherum which will lead to them growing until they become the Great Devourer who will then destroy the Material Plane.

After a bit a young man shows up and walks off with the Arch Mage and goes into a room and closes the door. Awhile later Valine comes up and the arch mage and prince come out.

In an instant, Valine is on the ground with a large black blade sticking out of her chest. The prince is standing there covered in blood and lifeless. Kavac tries to heal Valine and it appears to hurt her.

Then a voice rings out saying that time cannot be changed and that our world is doomed. Then the siren for the city goes off, it is under attack. The Pherum are attacking. Both Valine and the prince now have Protection from Good and Evil.

Snacks casts remove curse and Kavac casts Greater Restoration on Valine and takes the knife out of her chest.

Stop the Spindle

I talk Sylphie into coming into the Spindle room and to stop it spinning. She tries and is unable to pull it back. Then we make a plan for me to also embiggin and the two of us work together to stop the spindle.

Blink

The prince is now a pile of ash. The Arch Wizard is the one who cast it, and he shot Valine into the future. We hear scratching at the door.

One of the wizards gets grabbed by a Pherum and it wiggles it way inside of him.

After another a try Sylphie is able to break the spindle.

We’ve stopped the spindle and the city shudders. Pherum come into the building and take out a handful of skeletons and mages with them.

I stand and protect the spindle from anyone trying to spin it back up. I totally believe that starting it back up with allow the Pherum to become the Devourer that destroys the Material Plane.

I stayed there as long as I could take it, but Sylphie had jumped off the balcony and fell the 150 feet to the ground, so I embiggen myself, run and jump off the balcony after her. I nail a superhero landing beside her then Lay on Hands and heal her.

Derek and a mage end up falling while trying to cross the magic bridge that is no longer there.

We get everyone together at the base of the tower. The people in the city are running around screaming and crying.

The McGuffin™

Then we come upon a McGuffin™ with a three pointed bowl. Snacks touches it and gets a view of the entire city and can feel himself falling. Then Fierra touches it and attunes to it, she get the same experience as Snacks and feels deeply connected. Then Kavac, then me, then Derek, then Sylphie.

We hear an otherworldly voice asks us what we wish. Then 4 large arms reach up out of the sea of moving ice and grabs the city. Kavac asks if there is anything we can do to stop this. They say they can only give power to one.

We agree to give it to Fierra. It asks if she is ready to use the Mithilar. It is as though Mistral herself controls her hand. Fierra does something with a scroll, a very fancy scroll, then nothing happens.

Fierra then tells us we should leave. A comet streaks through the sky, punches a hole through the city right next to us, destroying the city and makes a 500 foot crater in the sea of moving ice and the arms holding the city crumble away and fall back into the sea.

Then Snacks says… hold on… and he summons a tarasque which smashes into the city and then the sea and begins fighting the arms. What is left of the city is now spinning.

Back to the Present-ish

Mistral then sends us all forward in time. We wake up in the ruins of the tower right next to the beach and a skull of a Tarrasque. The skull is up on a hill and looks a lot the lair for something. The party figures out that it is the lair of the Frost Maiden… We are on the Frost Maiden’s island now.

Derek is released by the Dark Prince.

Ten Towns is across the water now. The weather is even worse than it was earlier. We quickly get our cold weather gear on.

On the island, lots of tracks around us, but they are old. We take a long rest. It looks like the Frost Maiden is still in power and the unending winter is in effect.

We make our way up the mountain and find ourselves at the entrance, the skull of a tarasque. Sylphie, Snax and I head up there, Sylphie is now Huge.

Sylphie squeezes through and blue lights light up along the walls. There is a puzzle, I get bored and space out.

Snacks grabs the handles of the door at the end of the room and gets his hands frozen to them, Sylphie yanks him off of them.

Then with the party’s help, Sylphie does the puzzle and the symbols all light up and she is able to open the door.

Then there is a slide going down. Snacks blesses me with Darkvision. We go down the throat.

Aurel is down there forming some kind of glyphs. The party keeps messing with her, she does some things, then the fight is on.

A blizzard forms, vision is limited, the wind is really strong, ranged weapons are at disadvantage. She disappears.

Snacks calls in a celestial that blasts Ariel away. Then the ground cracks and falls. I land hard and am down. Fierra gets me stabilized.

Kavac heals me, I lay on hand, and Ice Mephits show up.

A large form shoots out of the ground, a gargantuan sized Frost Woman. I throw 2 of my 3 fireballs at her, everyone jumps in and does their part, Fierra strikes the killing blow with a spell.

But then it gets colder and colder. The walls of the cave seems to drift off, the floor becomes a six-sided star. Outside of the six-sided snow-flake there is nothing but snow. A crystal floats up and speaks. “You will make great statues in my domain.”

Ariel rises up in front of us as a pure crystalline creature. The ground crumbles beneath us and only a platform shaped like a snowflake is left. There are magical blizzards swirling around.

We get a couple of hits in then 3 glowing orbs come out of the ground and shine light on Aurel making her stronger. We take them out.

I throw my last fireball from the necklace at her and do some damage then the whole arena is covered in a non-damaging blizzard and the orbs come back. We take those out.

Sylphie gets close and whacks her with his maul and she poofs into snow and reappears behind us. Derek gets some hits in with his bugs and bow. As soon as she takes damage the orbs come back and she is invulnerable again.

And finally, one of Fierra’s skeletons hits Ariel, she crumbles and everything dims… and we are now in the cavern where we first fought her among the Devourer’s bones.

Kavac turns into a Giant Eagle and gets all of us out of the cavern. The blizzard recedes and we can see the Sea of Moving Ic and it is sunny outside. Kavac says a prayer and then we see a boat wash ashore.

Jon is upset about the sun for some reason, we pack him into Sylphie’s backpack and make our way down to the boat. We get in and the oars magically rowing, I’m a bit concerned about where it is going to take us.

After a day and a half we make it back to Icewind Dale. Snacks casts Remove Curse on Sylphie and she is back down to normal size. Amazingly our Axe Beaks are waiting on the beach for us.

We make our way to Ten Towns, Bryan Shandair, where Fierra tries to get a ticket to leave but the line is really long, she has now learned the Teleport spell and is going to use that to get out.

Sylphie donates all of her money to the local church where Helm is followed and together we go visit the Goliath villages in the hills.

The Adventures of Allessandro in Icewind Dale

I have had my Steam Deck for just over a month now and I am loving it.

I bought the cheapest version and upgraded it with a 1TB SSD, added a 1TB MicroSD card, and put it in a dbrand Project Killswitch case with the Ultimate Teardown skin.

I played 50+ hours of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered primarily hand-held but also attached to my tv using an Xbox controller. The experience is fantastic.

After 60+ hours into The Long Dark only handheld I am thoroughly in love with the Steam Deck. I primarily play it while sitting back on my recliner with it attached to an Apple laptop power supply. I do play it unplugged sometimes and feel like I get a reasonable amount of battery life out of it, but Spider-Man and The Long Dark burn through the battery in a couple of hours.

I am also using EmuStation to play old arcade games and some PSX games, Parappa the Rappa is my favorite using a Playstation 4 controller so the button mapping is easy.

Here are the other games I am actively playing:

• Capcom Arcade Stadium
• LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga
• Sky Force Reloaded
• Solitairica
• SteamWorld Heist
• Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
• Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

Overall I think the Steam Deck is an amazing gaming platform, I haven’t touched my Xbox or Switch since buying it, but I do expect to go back to the Switch to play the new Legend of Zelda game when that comes out.