journey to visit an ice goddess - help!

[Gilladian]

I'm being forced to throw together a quick adventure, lasting between six and nine hours of playtime, which will "end" a campaign for a group of about six or seven fourth to sixth level characters.

The goal is for them to travel through a series of caves and tunnels beneath an icy world, past the roots of a volcano and eventually reach the "realm" of a goddess.

The goddess is freezing the world to death, and the PCs are trying to get her to reverse her decision. This isn't the really important part. What I need are ideas for the trip.

I'm thinking some sort of ice caves with a slippery climb down a frozen river into a chasm and a fight on the climb down. What would work here?

Then a long cave hike, going from bitter cold to hot as they draw near the volcano. And of course some hot elemental creatures, maybe lava mephits or a smallish fire elemental.

And at last, some sort of challenges set by the goddess herself to protect her realm. She's a real goddess, and the PCs are not expected to be able to destroy her, or even to make a credible threat to her; they actually have something she wants and will try to trade it (a gemstone with a captive demon in it) to her to complete their mission.

This is a "campaign ender" confrontation, but only in a sense. We're dumping the current campaign, taking a break, and then most of us will be back with the same characters (and rotating DMs) but leaving out one or two really annoying players : -)

Thanks for the help!
Gilladian

 

[reason]

1) Have the demon be a more interesting (possibly sympathetic?) character, with the ability to get the PCs out of trouble once, but at some cost later on. Makes the whole thing more strategic, and prevents TPKs that would mess up the whole short thing. Also if the demon is sympathetic, makes handing it over at the end more of an interesting decision.

2) Encountered monstrostities don't have to be tough if the environment is obnoxious. Fights with tiny critters can be really horrid if the party is navigating a 2'-wide frozen ledge at the time.

3) That works both ways. It's always nice to for the players to set up encounter environments that they can turn against the opposition if they're smart enough.

4) Frozen waterfall. You can't get away without having one of these. The way up should be arduous, and halfway up, opponents attack from above (coming down ropes) and below (climbing up slowly). This is an interesting management battle...do you chop off icicles to hurl down, knowing that you're giving the enemy above the same idea? How to handle stealing the ropes from the enemy to get to the top more rapidly?

5) The old unbeatable monster in the steam encounter: in steam-filled tunnels and spaces, the PCs get to play hide and seek with some enormously powerful. scary and only half-seen foe.

6) An ice cavern filled entirely with corpses frozen into walls and suchlike. One of them has an item essential to progress, but of course the selfish cold spirits of the dead aren't going to give it up without some sort of challenge...

Reason