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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1004738" data-attributes="member: 1210">Icewater and the Dragon's GapOur heroes continue north.  Snow is on the ground; the sun is south in the sky.  Soon they have to blaze a trail.  Angelfire is profoundly uncomfortable; his fiery nature is not at all at home here.The little town of Icewater houses less than 500 people.  The party enters an inn as fast as possible, shivering from the cold.  Lester's wings are cloaked, but not especially hidden; our heroes definitely look out of place.  But the town's mood changes from sour suspicion to cheery jubilation when the group displays Lord Ruin's body, which they took along with them.  Soon the entire town turns out, and the streets are filled with rejoicing folk.  Most of the townsfolk are simple fishers or eke out a living as farmers; but clearly, there are some old warriors who have retired here, and they keep an eye on our heroes.  Dangerous strangers indeed, to have slain Lord Ruin!  The townsfolk sieze Ruin's body and drag it to a pyre, where they burn it amidst much throwing of rotten fruit.  Men come to urinate on the fire, and as the night wears on it becomes a sight to throw burnable garbage on, the fouler the better. Malford uses his illusions to project a slideshow of the battle (properly emphasizing his accomplishments, of course) while Turdlin loudly proclaims the glory of the God Malford.  Then Malford and Lester put on a fireworks display with their magic, and choruses of oohs and aahs rise from the crowd.  In all, their first public relations success on Arba.  Later, as the festivities continue in the town, our heroes return to the inn to seek information.  "Tell us about this 'Dragon's Gap,'" Orbius asks the bartender.The man blinks.  "Why, that's the sea we're on.  Good fishin' in there."  He grins."Why is it called that?""Oh, posh!  Just old legends, nothing to 'em.""I see... Do you know of the Halls of the Unbound?"Scratching his chin, the barkeep replies, "Sure!  Little isle, oh 'bout two days out the Gap.""Is there someone in town we could hire to take us across?"The jolly man bursts out laughing.  "Sure, you wanna wait til spring.  There's icebergs now- it's not safe, not by a longshot.""There's Polo of the Storms," suggests a patron at the bar.  "He's the only one crazy 'nuff to be out fishin' in it."Our heroes head to the docks, where this Polo of the Storms is said to be, but there's no one there.  However, Orbius' sharp eyes pick out a small boat out to sea.  As for the sea, it is indeed full of icebergs.  They float happily along the water in many places, and one presumes that they're below the surface too, right?  Probably as many you can't see as those you can, which numbers easily in the dozens... might be able to go from berg to berg afoot, a little bit.  But... not safe?  That's for sure.They wait for a while, then Malford has Lester fly him out to the boat.  The man within it is probably in his 40s, with receding white hair in long, salty tufts.  There's a large bucket packed with ice and half full of fish in his boat and he's holding a large net.  "Behold," cries Malford thanks to a tongues spell, "I am the god Malford!  I need transport," he adds."Hrmph," Polo grunts, and for the price of a hundred gold he agrees to take them to the Halls of the Unbound.  He cackles.  "The call me Polo of the Storms 'cause I'm the only one who goes out durin' the bad storms!  Needs my fish, I do."  They agree that they'll meet in the morning.  Polo tells them that it'll be about a two-day trip.That evening, Orbius and Jezebel have a drink.  That's all.Our heroes rest.  Several of them toss and turn; they're attempting a dangerous crossing with a dangerous item where their magic doesn't work well- hardly at all, in fact.  In the morning they meet Polo at the docks and realize that he's stinking drunk.  He rambles about how he's got to stay up for the whole time to fend off the bergs, but that's okay because he has a root to chew that'll keep him up the whole time and there's nothing to fear, he won't fall asleep, though he'd like it if someone would stay up to give him someone to talk to and on and on and on.After about four hours of travel there's a horrible scraping sound.  "Oops!" cries Polo of the Storms, swiftly pushing against something underwater with his pole.  "Heh heh," he says, shrugging, and keeps moving.A little later, Angelfire spots something in the distance- a serpentine shape, enormous, looping across the water.  "The dragon," Malford guesses.  Our heroes tense... but nothing emerges from the water to menace them, not yet.  "Nonsense!" laughs Polo.  "There's no dragon!"Orbius sighs and accepts some of the root as night comes on.  He doesn't want this tweaker to be the only one awake out here, no way.  Polo keeps on blathering and drinking the whole time and he doesn't seem to be eating.  Dawn starts to creep in from the south, and that's where we'll leave our heroes for now: partway across the Dragon's Gap, in a wee boat rowed and poled by a drunken tweaker, in water full of floating ice and maybe some kind of dragon... with no real working magic.Next Time: You guessed it- the Dragon Attacks!</blockquote>

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