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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 79701" data-attributes="member: 114">With no way back through the tunnels, and a bit of experimentation with old tree branches, they decide that although the ice wouldn't support horses, it will support people - One at a time they skate and slide across the frozen river, and then return to their horses. They need to set off upriver to the border keep. It would be less than days journey normally, but with snow no the ground and more falling every minute it looks like a long slog.As hour after hour drags on, the cold is getting increasingly hard to resist. The horses in particular are suffering, and it takes all of Trajans animal handling and M'irs wilderness lore to keep them all going. Finally, the keep appears amidst the swirling snows, and with great relief the company negotiate their entry into the tower.The next day is the second holyday of Ironwater, and Lysander, Trajan and Azrin spend the day in prayer and meditation. The group wait another day for the snows to fall, and then cross over the border into Morannon here and travel down the river to find the location of the secret door they had used three days earlier - and hopefully locate the "temple" which was marked on the map carried by the foreign spy.Looking around the site, M'ir opens himself up to the psychic impressions which have been left in that area, and he gets a very clear vision of a tall and beautiful man exiting the secret passageway, both angry and relieved. He is seen casting charms over it, and then striding off to the North West.Setting off through the crisp snow, they come across some frozen woodland, full of dead, bare and blackened branches reaching towards the sky. Leading their horses single file through the clearest trail, they are ambushed by a party of three hobgoblins who are defeated almost as soon as combat is engaged. They have very little of worth on them, except for some simple silver wolf-head pendants which Trajan keeps.Pressing on into late afternoon, under the darkening skies they become aware of a great clearing in the woods ahead of them. Creeping up closer, they can make out in the centre of the clearing a partially ruined curtain wall surrounding a huge, charcoal grey temple, with arched buttresses and walls which are covered in obscene designs, gargoyles and fiendish creatures. The air here is chill not with the fresh crispness of the snow, but the dank and bone-wearying cold from beyond the grave.While surveying the temple environment, Azrin becomes aware of a shimmering patch of air near them - not an invisible person, but the tell-tale sign of someone scrying them! After a short discussion the company decide that they can't to anything about it and so ignore it (!) while they make their plans to assault the temple DMsnote: Could I believe them happily continuing to plan when they *knew* they were being scried upon? No I couldn't! Still, it leaves them to blame for the debacle which follows...</blockquote>

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