Session 105: Frostfight

General Summary

15th Brussendar 836PD   Raven estimates that the howls on the wind are a couple hundred feet away, in the direction of the waterfall where the Syngornian army camped on their failed mission. Arthur brings up his telepathic bond with the party so that they can communicate without drawing any attention through talking.   Raven uses the darkness of the early morning hours to cloak the group in shadowy silent veils, allowing them to pass through the snow without trace. They travel across a frozen lake, arriving at the bottom of the waterfall that had frozen solid, creating a rough ladder of ice.   As soon as Raven begins to scope the waterfall to find the cavern entrance to the camp, a mound of snow explodes right next to him as a hulking, howling, Abominable Yeti bursts out its snowy spot. The cold breath of the howling yeti coats Raven in thick, biting layers of ice, but before it could swing at the frosty ranger, the hot lead of Orlando’s guns distract the monstrosity.   Before the rest of the party react, a second Yeti breaks its cold camouflage and howls its cold breath right across the party, but they all learned from Raven and manage to dodge the worst of the cold.   Raphael punishes the second yeti, mentally imprisoning it in its worst nightmare of surrounding flames. Raven backs up from the first yeti, enacting the oath from his bow to hunt monstrosities such as this, unleashing a blinding barrage of radiant arrows into the yeti.   Simeon attempts to divinely toll the wounded yeti closer to the end of its mortal coil, but his magic is interrupted by the reverberations across the ice, as the thunderous steps of a Frost Giant charge over the frozen waterfall and crack onto the thick ice. The huge blue glacial arms swing a greataxe deep into Simeon’s chest, critically wounding the cleric.   Worryingly, just as with the abominable ambush, where one strikes another follows. A large boulder of rock and ice is hurled over the top of the waterfall, the deadly snowball narrowly misses Raphael, the Winter Knight, and another Frost Giant joins the frozen fray!   Orlando distracts the boulder throwing Frost Giant, and Simeon blocks with his magic shield the chilling gaze of the yeti’s blue simian eyes. With a yeti and a frost giant focusing their sights on Simeon, Raphael comes to the Aasimar’s aid and slashes deeply into the giant with the cold cuts of Frostweaver.   Simeon takes the opportunity to misty step back away, and calls down a fiery storm that burns across both of the giants and yetis, with the first yeti finally singed to death and the second yeti’s imaginary flames becoming very real!   The Boulder giant shakes the yeti out of his mental prison, and takes a retributive swing against Simeon, knocking him down unconscious. But the Moonweaver’s chosen is not down for long, as the Cleric of Moradin, Orlando’s healing words spark Simeon back to the waking, wintery world.   In the prime Wizard position, safely at the back behind the danger, Arthur deduces that whilst these creatures are cunning, these inhospitable inhabitants aren’t intelligent. With his fingers to his temples, Arthur points his pocket watch focus to a central point between the giants and yeti, and clicks to detonate an explosion of psychic energy across them. The creatures’ synapses are filled with painful static, debilitating their attacks in a typically Arthur display of swift and precisive devastation.   The last Yeti stares with it’s bloodied blue eyes directly at Orlando, the chilling gaze’s magic freezes the gnomes muscles to keep him still enough for the yeti to slash him into unconsciousness with its claws. Raven avenges his ranged compatriot, felling the final abominable, and aims his bow at the Frost Giant that Raphael smites to the ground with the eldritch power of his patron. The prone giant is still big enough of a target for Raven’s arrow to find its way through its head.   The final giant seeks to fell the trickster cleric again, but Simeon’s life is spared another killing blow with the release of an arcane shield from his spell storing ring. The raging giant bellows at its cheated strikes, and the momentary distraction gives time for Raphael to skid across the ice, slicing low into the giant’s legs with his sword and dagger, felling the finale Frost Giant.   Having sliden next to Orlando, Raphael slips a healing potion into the gnome's mouth. The party gather themselves for a few moments to not be on the cusp of death, and finally make their way to the entrance to the cavern behind the waterfall.   Raven scouts ahead, the floors of the tunnel are covered in webs of rime, and finds a Syngornian chest and some broken crates at one end of a tunnel. He and Raphael attempt to open it until Raven suddenly disappears from everyone’s view. Although they can still hear the muffled cries from within the tunnel, and scuttling sounds.   Orlando activates his Goggles of the Guardian, to pierce through the veil and spots Raven restrained in invisible ghostly webbing, and currently suffering a bad case of Ghostbite as an invisible Ghostwalk Spider sinks its fangs into the ranger.   Just as Orlando shoots into the spider and relays Raven’s situation, Arthur disappears as well as another Ghostwalk Spider ensnares the wizard in its ghost webs. Through Orlando’s directions and Simeon guiding bolts providing enough divine light to pin point the spiders, the Unbroken soon squash the invisible inhabitants and free their party members from the webs.   Now, after being rudely interrupted, Raven and Raphael manage to pick the chests’ lock and find 900 gold. Orlando scouts the other end of the tunnel; the Goggles’ see invisibility confirming no other Ghostwalk spiders are hiding. They enter a small chamber, and Arthur spots a an almost ‘egg’ shape mound of organic cold crystal, with a glowing white-ish blue at the heart of it. He recognises it as an ‘Essence of Elemental Cold’, a rare arcane occurrence of a small naturally forming point that links to the plane of cold.   The Winter Knight is deeply interested in this essence, and offers assistance to Arthur and Orlando in helping to extract it, although Arthur warns that it is a task not without serious risk in case the essence is damaged, unleashing unstable cold elemental energy. Orlando begins the extraction, but the intense cold around the essence freezes the mechanisms within Orlando’s metal hand and the tool slips…   An explosion of elemental energy is imminent, but with a single utterance of ‘Fuck!’ Arthur reacts quickly to exert the smallest amount of time around Orlando’s metal hand, reverting it to it pre-frozen and more nimble condition, allowing the Rune Cleric to now safely extract the essence.   The essence is put in the suitable Bag of Colding, and the party move on through the cavern where they soon find the remnants of the Syngornian Army’s camp. The party take a short break to recover and prepare for their several mile trek to the White Dragon’s lair. Raven finds amongst the supplies an Arrow of White Dragon Slaying…