Isklexi
First Post
Applied Eschatology
It took the constables a few days to travel north across the mountains to the glacier. They ran into a few complications like a collapsing ice shelf, but they were well equipped to overcome the obstacles, and Irony’s magic helped to protect them from the cold. They opted to keep Leone in the Absurdist Web the entire trip to avoid having to deal with a potentially dangerous prisoner. Eventually, the party emerged from the mountains into a glacier valley. At the entrance to the valley, a great stone pillar carved with infernal images and the message, “Gaze ye upon Knutpara, eternal bastion of the Demonocracy, built to withstand any army’s siege,” greeted the constables and the sight of a trackless glacier beyond.
The constables began the trek across the great glacier’s surface in search of the ancient fortress. It wasn’t long before they stumbled upon a strange sight, a grisly totem made from humanoid skulls and draped in frozen entrails. Irony and Rai examined the totem for magic and realized too late that the totem acted as some kind of magical alarm sensor. The constables quickly took cover amidst nearby snowdrifts hoping to spot the inevitable scouts before they themselves were spotted. It didn’t take long before figures appeared through the falling snow; two frost giants and what at first looked like two polar bears. As the giants drew closer, it quickly became apparent that their pets were definitely not polar bears. The twisted creatures walked on six legs, their thick muscles clearly visible thanks to their lack of skin, and they each wore the skinned hide of a polar bear like a grisly cloak. The beasts began to sniff around the totem. Fearing that the creatures would soon find them by scent, the party burst from hiding to attack the giants and their monstrous pets.
The constables focused their efforts on the giants first. Caught off guard, one of the giants fell immediately to the party’s opening salvo. The fiendish beasts charged towards the party while the remaining giant hurled huge spears. One of the fiendish creatures fell next in an unnaturally copious fountain of blood. The other giant fell before their onslaught and they turned to the final beast when the first monster pulled itself up from the gore spattered snow and leapt upon them again. Irony realized the creature was drawing the blood on the snow into itself, regenerating its wounds. The constables redoubled their efforts to bring the beasts down. Once they fell upon the bloodstained snow again, the men immediately rushed forward to push their large carcasses away from the blood. Afterwards, Irony archly pointed out that she could have teleported the corpses away from the blood if they’d paused for but a moment.
The constables soon located a frozen river that cut a rift into the glacier lined with more of the macabre totems. The constables followed the rift while carefully keeping clear of the totems. Soon the party could make out three stone structures jutting from the glacier, two north and one south of the growing rift. They also spotted a camp of Frost Giants along the southern edge of the rift. The constables decided that they couldn’t explore the structures while leaving the giants in the camp to flank them. The party sprang a devastating ambush on the camp, killing several of its occupants by stealth before eliminating the remainder in open combat.
The party discovered a pit in the middle of the camp that led deeper into the glacier. They realized that the squat stone structures were actually the tops of towers buried by the glacier. The constables lowered a rope into the camp shaft and Doran rappelled down into the glacier below to investigate. Unfortunately, he emerged from the shaft directly above a Frost Giant. The giant attempted to lift a horn to his lips as Doran dropped from the ceiling, swords drawn. Landing atop the giant’s head, Doran managed to slay the guard before he could sound the alarm. The rest of the constables followed Doran down the shaft and into the glacier. Unfortunately for their attempts at infiltration, the party immediately rounded the corner into another guard that did sound his alarm horn.
Giants from the other side of the Ice Rift responded to the alarm and began heading towards the party across large ice bridges that spanned the chasm. The constables engaged in a furious battle with the giants. As their numbers dwindled, the giants retreated across the ice bridge. Their shaman used her magic to shatter the end of the ice bridge. Doran sprinted across the collapsing ice bridge and leapt across the gap to prevent their escape. Their retreat stymied, the giants quickly succumbed to Doran’s blades and withering gunfire from the constables across the chasm.
The party explored the ruined towers and discovered an Obscurati laboratory along with two researchers. Under duress, the researchers revealed that the Ob mined the ancient glacier for meteor fragments, relics of the meteor shower that destroyed the ancient fortress. The researchers tested magical oils distilled from the meteors in the Ob’s curious lanterns. The constables perused some of their research notes to see the curious effects of the lantern’s light. They then coerced the researchers into their Absurdist Web, not wanting to risk the pair alerting or abetting the remaining giants. The constables then continued down to the rift floor. They immediately noticed the lanterns illuminating the bottom of the chasm with a soft blue light. The party consulted the research notes taken from the researchers and realized the supernatural light would try to cloud their minds and pacify them. They steeled their minds and set out to explore the rift. Preparing beforehand allowed them to resist the lanterns’ effects without incident.
The party followed the stream to a waterfall cascading from the top of the glacier. Magical sigils designed to dispel enchantments that grant resistance to the cold ringed the pool at the waterfall’s base. Irony and Rai worked together to dismantle the runes before the constables pressed through the waterfall to the cave beyond. Once beyond the roar of the waterfall, the constables could hear the sounds of excavating. They came upon a series of icy prison cells packed with enslaved Dwarves overlooking a frigid quarry. The giants were using slave labor to dig meteor fragments from within the glacier. Approaching the cells quietly, the constables were able to speak with some of the prisoners without the giants in the quarry noticing them. Notably, they found the dwarven mercenary Kvarti Gorbity. Kvarti told the party that he used to explore old ruins when he was younger and came to investigate when he heard strange rumors of activity in his old stomping grounds. The sheer number of giants in the area caught him by surprise, and they captured him. Kvarti was able to tell the constables how many giants remained and warned them that the giant’s chieftain was a formidable warrior. The party then executed a surprise assault from the upper ledge, bombarding the giants below with grenades and gunfire as the party’s swordsmen slid down the quarry slopes.
Once the giants were vanquished and the prisoners freed, the constables discussed their options. They wanted to get the prisoners to safety, but they couldn’t teleport them to a Drakran city without risking alerting Ob agents. They couldn’t trek back across the glacier with over a dozen extra mouths to feed either. The party decided to open a gate to Slate, sending the prisoners and all of the laboratory equipment back to Risur, including the Ob researchers in custody. The Drakran prisoners were happy to leave the country where corrupt officials had sold them into slavery, and Kvarti promised to deliver their report to RHC officers in Slate along with the Ob assets. The constables then delved into the quarry’s deepest chamber, the lich’s icy tomb.
The Lich’s chamber was a cramped, icy oubliette with a small stream of frigid water flowing into a crack in the floor. The Lich itself was entombed in the ice forming the chamber’s northern wall. It glowered down at them, hateful blue embers burning in its empty eye sockets. The Lich’s voice echoed to them through the ice. It introduced itself as Aurgelmir, Archwarlock of the Demonocracy. Aurgelmir already knew why the constables had come and demanded they free him from his icy prison in exchange for the magic ritual they sought. The constables conferred with themselves but ultimately decided they had little choice. The Ob conclave was fast approaching, and the Lich’s ritual was the surest way to infiltrate the clandestine meeting. They agreed to Aurgelmir’s terms if he gave them the ritual and excised Leone’s spirit before they freed him. Aurgelmir relented but warned that he would transmute the blood in their veins to ice if they reneged. He then commanded that they bring him an orb made of crystal or ice and bring Leone forward.
Lacking any crystal balls, the constables fashioned an orb from the glacier’s ice and then pulled Leone from the Absurdist Web. Confused, Leone resisted as best he could until the party pinned him to the glacier wall and Aurgelmir cast his dark ritual. The orb of ice turned pitch black as Leone’s soul was ripped out, leaving Alexander Grappa as the sole owner of his new body. The constables shattered the orb at Alexander’s urging so that Leone’s spirit could move on to whatever awaited him. True to their word, the constables then shattered the ice imprisoning Aurgelmir. The undead giant gloated of the reckoning he would visit upon the descendants of the rebellious dwarves as he pulled himself from the ice. Aurgelmir’s laughter quickly faded when another sinister shadow crept up the cave walls. The familiar winged and horned silhouette of Calaphax loomed upon the chamber walls. The sneering shade clutched a swirling figment of light and shadow in one clawed hand, crushing it into a shower of fading sparks. Aurgelmir cried out furiously as his skeletal form collapsed into desiccated splinters, and the shade vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Irony speculated that their infernal “friend” must have somehow obtained the Lich’s phylactery and destroyed it. The constables had no way of knowing why Cal would destroy Aurgelmir, and they had no time to dwell on the matter. With Grappa and the ritual in hand, the constables trekked back across the frozen tundra.
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It took the constables a few days to travel north across the mountains to the glacier. They ran into a few complications like a collapsing ice shelf, but they were well equipped to overcome the obstacles, and Irony’s magic helped to protect them from the cold. They opted to keep Leone in the Absurdist Web the entire trip to avoid having to deal with a potentially dangerous prisoner. Eventually, the party emerged from the mountains into a glacier valley. At the entrance to the valley, a great stone pillar carved with infernal images and the message, “Gaze ye upon Knutpara, eternal bastion of the Demonocracy, built to withstand any army’s siege,” greeted the constables and the sight of a trackless glacier beyond.
The constables began the trek across the great glacier’s surface in search of the ancient fortress. It wasn’t long before they stumbled upon a strange sight, a grisly totem made from humanoid skulls and draped in frozen entrails. Irony and Rai examined the totem for magic and realized too late that the totem acted as some kind of magical alarm sensor. The constables quickly took cover amidst nearby snowdrifts hoping to spot the inevitable scouts before they themselves were spotted. It didn’t take long before figures appeared through the falling snow; two frost giants and what at first looked like two polar bears. As the giants drew closer, it quickly became apparent that their pets were definitely not polar bears. The twisted creatures walked on six legs, their thick muscles clearly visible thanks to their lack of skin, and they each wore the skinned hide of a polar bear like a grisly cloak. The beasts began to sniff around the totem. Fearing that the creatures would soon find them by scent, the party burst from hiding to attack the giants and their monstrous pets.
The constables focused their efforts on the giants first. Caught off guard, one of the giants fell immediately to the party’s opening salvo. The fiendish beasts charged towards the party while the remaining giant hurled huge spears. One of the fiendish creatures fell next in an unnaturally copious fountain of blood. The other giant fell before their onslaught and they turned to the final beast when the first monster pulled itself up from the gore spattered snow and leapt upon them again. Irony realized the creature was drawing the blood on the snow into itself, regenerating its wounds. The constables redoubled their efforts to bring the beasts down. Once they fell upon the bloodstained snow again, the men immediately rushed forward to push their large carcasses away from the blood. Afterwards, Irony archly pointed out that she could have teleported the corpses away from the blood if they’d paused for but a moment.
The constables soon located a frozen river that cut a rift into the glacier lined with more of the macabre totems. The constables followed the rift while carefully keeping clear of the totems. Soon the party could make out three stone structures jutting from the glacier, two north and one south of the growing rift. They also spotted a camp of Frost Giants along the southern edge of the rift. The constables decided that they couldn’t explore the structures while leaving the giants in the camp to flank them. The party sprang a devastating ambush on the camp, killing several of its occupants by stealth before eliminating the remainder in open combat.
The party discovered a pit in the middle of the camp that led deeper into the glacier. They realized that the squat stone structures were actually the tops of towers buried by the glacier. The constables lowered a rope into the camp shaft and Doran rappelled down into the glacier below to investigate. Unfortunately, he emerged from the shaft directly above a Frost Giant. The giant attempted to lift a horn to his lips as Doran dropped from the ceiling, swords drawn. Landing atop the giant’s head, Doran managed to slay the guard before he could sound the alarm. The rest of the constables followed Doran down the shaft and into the glacier. Unfortunately for their attempts at infiltration, the party immediately rounded the corner into another guard that did sound his alarm horn.
Giants from the other side of the Ice Rift responded to the alarm and began heading towards the party across large ice bridges that spanned the chasm. The constables engaged in a furious battle with the giants. As their numbers dwindled, the giants retreated across the ice bridge. Their shaman used her magic to shatter the end of the ice bridge. Doran sprinted across the collapsing ice bridge and leapt across the gap to prevent their escape. Their retreat stymied, the giants quickly succumbed to Doran’s blades and withering gunfire from the constables across the chasm.
The party explored the ruined towers and discovered an Obscurati laboratory along with two researchers. Under duress, the researchers revealed that the Ob mined the ancient glacier for meteor fragments, relics of the meteor shower that destroyed the ancient fortress. The researchers tested magical oils distilled from the meteors in the Ob’s curious lanterns. The constables perused some of their research notes to see the curious effects of the lantern’s light. They then coerced the researchers into their Absurdist Web, not wanting to risk the pair alerting or abetting the remaining giants. The constables then continued down to the rift floor. They immediately noticed the lanterns illuminating the bottom of the chasm with a soft blue light. The party consulted the research notes taken from the researchers and realized the supernatural light would try to cloud their minds and pacify them. They steeled their minds and set out to explore the rift. Preparing beforehand allowed them to resist the lanterns’ effects without incident.
The party followed the stream to a waterfall cascading from the top of the glacier. Magical sigils designed to dispel enchantments that grant resistance to the cold ringed the pool at the waterfall’s base. Irony and Rai worked together to dismantle the runes before the constables pressed through the waterfall to the cave beyond. Once beyond the roar of the waterfall, the constables could hear the sounds of excavating. They came upon a series of icy prison cells packed with enslaved Dwarves overlooking a frigid quarry. The giants were using slave labor to dig meteor fragments from within the glacier. Approaching the cells quietly, the constables were able to speak with some of the prisoners without the giants in the quarry noticing them. Notably, they found the dwarven mercenary Kvarti Gorbity. Kvarti told the party that he used to explore old ruins when he was younger and came to investigate when he heard strange rumors of activity in his old stomping grounds. The sheer number of giants in the area caught him by surprise, and they captured him. Kvarti was able to tell the constables how many giants remained and warned them that the giant’s chieftain was a formidable warrior. The party then executed a surprise assault from the upper ledge, bombarding the giants below with grenades and gunfire as the party’s swordsmen slid down the quarry slopes.
Once the giants were vanquished and the prisoners freed, the constables discussed their options. They wanted to get the prisoners to safety, but they couldn’t teleport them to a Drakran city without risking alerting Ob agents. They couldn’t trek back across the glacier with over a dozen extra mouths to feed either. The party decided to open a gate to Slate, sending the prisoners and all of the laboratory equipment back to Risur, including the Ob researchers in custody. The Drakran prisoners were happy to leave the country where corrupt officials had sold them into slavery, and Kvarti promised to deliver their report to RHC officers in Slate along with the Ob assets. The constables then delved into the quarry’s deepest chamber, the lich’s icy tomb.
The Lich’s chamber was a cramped, icy oubliette with a small stream of frigid water flowing into a crack in the floor. The Lich itself was entombed in the ice forming the chamber’s northern wall. It glowered down at them, hateful blue embers burning in its empty eye sockets. The Lich’s voice echoed to them through the ice. It introduced itself as Aurgelmir, Archwarlock of the Demonocracy. Aurgelmir already knew why the constables had come and demanded they free him from his icy prison in exchange for the magic ritual they sought. The constables conferred with themselves but ultimately decided they had little choice. The Ob conclave was fast approaching, and the Lich’s ritual was the surest way to infiltrate the clandestine meeting. They agreed to Aurgelmir’s terms if he gave them the ritual and excised Leone’s spirit before they freed him. Aurgelmir relented but warned that he would transmute the blood in their veins to ice if they reneged. He then commanded that they bring him an orb made of crystal or ice and bring Leone forward.
Lacking any crystal balls, the constables fashioned an orb from the glacier’s ice and then pulled Leone from the Absurdist Web. Confused, Leone resisted as best he could until the party pinned him to the glacier wall and Aurgelmir cast his dark ritual. The orb of ice turned pitch black as Leone’s soul was ripped out, leaving Alexander Grappa as the sole owner of his new body. The constables shattered the orb at Alexander’s urging so that Leone’s spirit could move on to whatever awaited him. True to their word, the constables then shattered the ice imprisoning Aurgelmir. The undead giant gloated of the reckoning he would visit upon the descendants of the rebellious dwarves as he pulled himself from the ice. Aurgelmir’s laughter quickly faded when another sinister shadow crept up the cave walls. The familiar winged and horned silhouette of Calaphax loomed upon the chamber walls. The sneering shade clutched a swirling figment of light and shadow in one clawed hand, crushing it into a shower of fading sparks. Aurgelmir cried out furiously as his skeletal form collapsed into desiccated splinters, and the shade vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Irony speculated that their infernal “friend” must have somehow obtained the Lich’s phylactery and destroyed it. The constables had no way of knowing why Cal would destroy Aurgelmir, and they had no time to dwell on the matter. With Grappa and the ritual in hand, the constables trekked back across the frozen tundra.
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