Session 1

General Summary

Previously ...

The Party had arrived in Bryn Shander in the early morning hours of the 18th of Flamerule and after dropping of the iron and receiving their reward, gone to sleep in their respective houses or inns, with the majority staying with Aabel.

Small wakeup call

18th of Flamerule, 15:00
A small kid knocked on the door of Hex's Dryery, with a message from Hilda Trollbane. The messenger was a little local kid, wrapped in heavy furs and made into a barrel-like object.
The message itself was simple - Torrga Icevein had arrived in town yesterday, at the party was out.
After receiving their just reward of 2 silver, the kid ran off to buy candy for him and his friends.

The "morning" council

18th of Flamerule, 15:30
The group joined up at The Northlook and made plans on how to deal with the situation. After some hot cocoa and no good ideas, it was decided that they should just scout out the place and see what's up.

Torg's Warehouse

18th of Flamerule, 16:30
The Party split up, sending Hex Foolcut and Aabel O'Hare to scout by more unscrupulous means.
The five remaining party members made their way directly to the front of Torg's Warehouse and Exo'six a.k.a. EX-06 asked the guard about meeting their tribe, which the guard seemed to have an understanding about and went to notify Torrga Icevein about visitors.
They were invited into the second floor office that Torrga was currently inhabiting and gained their audience, where they simply stated they had heard about her new employee and wanted to have a word. This seemed to surprise Torrga somewhat, as she told the guard that escorted them to get lost.
Torga had no qualms about people talking to her employees and sent the party on their way without further thought, though she did seem to make notes right after the meeting to a small notebook that she had just opened.
Empty handed, or perhaps not, as they did get the name of their quarry, the party made their way back to the ground floor where the workers were currently loading goods to and from one of the large sleds in the warehouse.

They were moving between the cellar entrance in one of the corners of the warehouse and the largest sled, which is known to belong to Torrga herself.
Having no better ideas, they asked the guard if they could have a word with Seppo, to which the guard agreed to, as he too considers Seppo to be a strange one for his advanced arctic acclimatization, or perhaps this isn't a new thing, as people who can handle the cold this well are quite rare indeed.

Meanwhile...

... Hex and Aabel gained entry to the warehouse by picking some locks and, after a short contemplation of whether to use a box as cover or not, made their way to the second story railing that covers the entire warehouse.
Upon starting their climb, they were immediately spotted by some of their friends, who made sure to make enough noise to create a good cover for them.
They managed to move to the top of Torrga's office, as there was some room between the roof and the ceiling of the office area and tried to listen in, but only managing to disturb a mouse nest and likely condemn the babies to death. They did manage to punch a hole through the ceiling inside the mouse nest, but it wasn't enough to get any details on what's going on inside.
Somewhat defeated, they climbed back down to the second floor railing and went to explore the right side of the office, which had a door blocked off by some crates and proceeded to clear it up and unlock the corroded door which was also barred from the inside.

Meeting Seppo

Minerva used her amazonian charms to convince another worker in the warehouse to go look for Seppo, which he was fine with doing, as he was going by him anyway.
Soon after, a group of 3 emerged from the cellar entrace, the guard and the worker who were both sent to fetch Seppo, in case one failed, and Seppo himself.
In his full glory of southern style clothing, exposed tan features and a slight blueish tint to his eyes, the man in front of them exhumed confidence. The paladins of the group immediately attempted to determine his essence, as they often do, and all three were taken aback by the stentch of undead flowing off the man.
The party had a small conversation with him, learning that he's from the far south city of Murann and arrived in Icewind Dale only a bit of time ago. He seemed generally open to conversation and also revealed that his ability to withstand the cold has been him since his inception.
Aside from the stench of undead, which only the paladins detected, and cold piercing eyes, there wasn't anything that seemed too off about the man. He was definitely a lot more spry than the usual zombie, if that's what he was.
After quenching their thirst for knowledge, Seppo left them and descended back down the cellar. After he left, a general sense of warmth swathed the party, as if the air around Seppo had been unnoticeably turning cold and his exit brought the temperature back up.
The group left, as they got all they needed, seemingly, and started making their way back to The Northlook.

The "stash" room

After getting the door open, Hex and Aabel found themselves in a room with hundreds of finely crafter scrimshaws and art objects made of glass or glass like material, as well as a locked chest. They expect the scrimshaws to be worth quite a lot in total, but there'd be no way for them to get it all out safely.
They also noticed a hidden door in the wall that led to the office, where Torrga was currently doing paperwork. The hidden door is likely unnoticeable from within the office itself, but has clearly been used often, from the marks on the floor and the dust.
As Aabel was clearing the shelves silently, Hex made his way to the chest and took some time to pick the lock. Alas, the lock was no match for him and he proceeded to open the chest, immediately releasing gas into the room and covering both himself and Aabel. With some luck, they managed to not make too much noise and held in their coughs as the gas ravaged their lungs. Hex took the brunt of it and was visibly shaken and asked Aabel to finish the job.
The chest held a small canister that held the gas and had a valve that could easily be shut by shoving a knife between the lid in the right location before opening it. A simple, yet effective design, clearly.
Within the chest was a soft dark lined cloth that held a large pouch with 90 gold coins and 128 silver coins, a smaller pouch with 5 banded agate's, worth 30 gp each and a well crafted shortsword in a hilt.
They took 40 scrimshaws each, as much as they could reasonably carry and still make it out, along with everything in the chest. Hex locked the chestback up, but failed to lock the door behind them.
They made it back to the ceiling of the office to actually get more intel, but could not make anything out. There was an old window right above the office that hadn't been opened in a while and they decided to use that as an exit, but couldn't get it open without making noise, thereby alerting Torrga of something.
At first, she didn't seem to figure out where it came from, as she stood in from of her office, but Hex set her straight by dropping one of the mouse babies he found, to land right next to her.
This naturally brought her attention to the attic space and she made her way towards the left of the office, where, unbeknownst to the devious duo, an old ladder stood.
They realized the jig was up and Aabel quickly smashed the window in and the duo jumped out into the snow covered street below, which ended badly for Hex, as he missed his mark and smashed face first into packed snow, a slight distance off the snowpile.
Perhaps more sadly, 17 of the small scrimshaws broke during the fall, but luckily Aabel had the coins, gems and sword.
The warehouse was immediately riled up and there wasn't much time, so Aabel hid the body of Hex in the snowpile as quickly as possible and made sure he wouldn't immediately die and then had to run off, as someone was unlocking the doors right behind him.
He took off, but was clearly seen by his pursuers, who couldn't keep up with his fast feet.

Relaxing at The Northlook

18th of Flamerule, 17:00
Aabel ran the whole way back and managed to beat the party there, ordering hot cocoas for all of them, except Hex and greeted them somewhat uncomfortably. The situation was quickly revealed and Exo'six was struck the hardest by the loss of Hex.
Exo'six:

He had all the money.

Exo'six decided to go grab the body of Hex and headed off on his own. Some of the party followed him, but the rest stayed at The Northlook with their hot cocoa.

Recovering the body of Hex

18th of Flamerule, 17:15
On his way to the warehouse, Exo'six found a drunkard who was passed out in the snow and picked him up, then continued on towards Hex.
Reaching Torg's Warehouse, he saw from afar that there was a group of around 10 people right near the place where Hex was supposedly buried in snow. It appeared to be Torrga, a couple of guys from the warehouse itself and a bunch of unknowns. Torrga seemed to be giving orders to them, and after a while, left the local boys to patrol the warehouse and headed in the warehouse herself.
The patrols weren't incredibly effective and gave Exo'six enough time to quickly pick up Hex from the snow, luckily he was still there and nobody had found him.
Exo'six made his way back to the party and dropped off the drunkard to The House of the Triad, which The Cult of Auril has taken over.
The body was dropped off at the back door with the usual signal and soon after, a cultist brought the body inside, never to be seen again.
While the body was taken in, Exo'six:

Auril needs more sacrifices.

Advisory meeting with Mishann

18th of Flamerule, 19:00
Pho and a couple of the guys took a trip to House of the Morninglord and had a word with Mishann.
Pho let the cleric know that he'd seen an undead under the employ of Torrga, to which the cleric mentioned that she's not someone you want to make an enemy of, but that it is a surprise to her and should be dealt with.
Pho also asked about the undead creature he sensed under The Plucky Horseradish, which, to his surprise, Mishann was aware of and let him know that it's sanctioned by the town, as they're producing Mummy's Tea, which they share with the town and help keep it free of disease.
Mishann was largely adamant that the undead threat should be dealt with, but without the involvement and attention of Torrga.

Supplies from Blackiron Blades

18th of Flamerule, 19:45
The party grabbed some general supplies and also a curious fur tent contraption from Garn the Hammer, that his sister Elza has seemingly been wanting to get rid of for a while.
After a difficult haggling session between Hex and Garn, the price was substantially decreased and the party is in possession of a unique item that allows them to set up a tent fairly quickly in the wild.
Aabel also ordered a metal-reinforced mask from Garn of a fox or wolf. It should be doable within 2 weeks.

Aabel's Brewery

18th of Flamerule, 20:30
At some point, Aabel made his way to his brewery to check it out and saw from a distance that it had been marked with a white X with a rectangle around it, just to the side of the door. Him not being related to the underground, he didn't immediately know what that meant.
He kept an eye out in the distance for some time, but saw no movement and decided to head back to the party, what with safety in numbers and all.

Leaving Bryn Shander

18th of Flamerule, 21:00
The party decided to leave town, heading north, before the heat is up and the weather was very suitable for it. When leaving, the guards didn't question them much, but there was one individual seemingly taking a closer look at the group and their sleds as they were leaving, as if searching for something. Minerva spooked him out of his focus, but didn't get much out of him.
As they left town, the skies had largely cleared up and the aurora were shining brightly, creating a fairly beautiful sight across the tundra. It was still somewhat cold, but nothing close to the last time.

On the road to Termalaine

18th of Flamerule, 23:30
Around halfway between Bryn Shander and Termalaine they came across strange tracks of a large bird, which had suddenly pulled to the right and ran into the wilds, they decided to investigate and follow the tracks.

The White Fox

19th of Flamerule, 01:05 Eventually, they came across the tracks of a larger group of people which started to cross paths with the tracks of the large bird and continued to follow it, they seemed very fresh.
But before they got too far off the road, perhaps slightly more than an hour in, the more observant of them - Exo'six - noticed an arctic fox looking at them from the hilltop to the south.
Tirten went over to investigate, taking on a similar form and managed to strike up a conversation with the creature, who seemed to observe him with a higher intelligence than an animal of this sort would normally be granted.
The fox turned into a fairly attractive human female, covered in various furs that blend in easily with the surroundings. Things seemed to be going well and the interloper seemed to be somewhat interested in the party, but something changed in their demeanor, as Tirten revealed they wish to end the winter.
Shortly after that, the woman dismissed him with a striking comment and with the snap of her fingers and some magical words, Tirten saw as his party was pummeled by a localized hailstorm, which almost killed a few of them.
The party started running up the hillside, but were quite far away and took some time to catch up. The first to reach was Aabel, who threw a dagger in the air, towards the woman and seemed to immediately appear at the dagger, as if teleported through a dark cloud of dust or shadow and made it to Tirten first.
The woman then summoned a polar bear out of the ground right next to her and send it against the party, while taking hits from afar from Hex. The bear made quick work of Aabel and ripped him to shreds, then sliced through Tirten as he attempted to get Aabel out of there and harmed him greatly.
While the rest of the party was struggling to catch up to the people ahead, the woman opened up a wide wind wall that landed right on top of Tirten and Aabel, felling Tirten and causing additional damage to the unconscious Aabel. Shortly after, the bear ran through the wall of wind and made his presence known to the arriving members.
Minerva had the wisdom to try to save her friends and bypassed the bear and jumped through the seemingly impenetrable wind wall, surprising the woman, who morphed into a fox again and ran off quickly.
The others made quick work of the polar bear and it seemed confused, as it died and then turned to nothingness.
The party regrouped to lick their wounds, of which there were plenty from such a short and violent encounter. They made camp and rested in their newly acquired tent.

The messenger

19th of Flamerule, 02:30
They finally track down the bird and it turns out to be an Axe beak, which has been savagely cut to pieces and next to it lies the single crude arrow-pierced corpse of a human male, who had been cleaned of his earthly possessions and likely his furs.
The snow around the scene has been thoroughly walked through and the tracks continue northwards from there, possibly around 10 individuals, but at least they're not cannibals.
Mervin saved what could be saved from the carcass and cut himself some leftover pieces that the previous group didn't bother to work for, while the others searched through the belongings of the man.
They managed to find a sealed scroll from the boot of the man, which was sealed with the mark of a Lord M, which Hex knows to be related to the underground in Targos. The man was also carrying the heraldry of Targos on the shoulder of his leather armor.
They decided to open the letter and it simply read:

The plan is accepted and is a go. I will expect great results, just make sure to actually clean up the mine later.

As they were moving back to the road, they saw Auril fly over on her large white bird, to which Aabel had some spicy words to share.
But, they get back on the road and reach Termalaine by morning, as is tradition.

Termalaine

19th of Flamerule, 06:05
Termalaine is a quiet town that appears abandoned, at first glance. The party arrives and there's not a single light or smoking chimney, only snow covered roofs and somewhat travelled roads.
As they get closer, they notice fine carvings on the walls and pillars holding up the second story balconies on some buildings.
The town appears to place great emphasis on beauty, but appears completely abandoned in the early morning, as the light from the fresh aurora, left by Auril, sheds dim light across it all.
They make it to The Eastside, which Pho has visited in the past and wake up the young proprietor, Marta, who welcomes them with open arms.
As it's morning, Marta starts lighting the lanterns and making the fire in the fireplace, as the party asks for beds and goes to sleep, leaving Exo'six a.k.a. EX-06 downstairs to be used as a coat hanger and the business ramps up throughout the day.

Report Date

13 Nov 2021

Primary Location

Bryn Shander