Cache a Fallen Star pt. 3

The party stands on the field of recent battle... a twenty feet wide paved "trough" that has been cut into the ridge of the Malochan Mountains. It runs to the West from this scene of battle and toward the enclave of the Frost Giant Jarl. It also runs to the East toward destinations unknown.

The recently slain Frost Giants are determined by Mai to have owned magical axes. Those axes and the bodies of their owners are piled on the curious pyramid-like wagon. Its 32 dwarven slaves are then freed from their chains. Two Gnomes are also discovered, though their fetters are faked. Gnostwick and Gnarlsley, claim to be prisoners, but their veracity is called into question by Quin, who is not easily deceived. The freed dwarves, with ever growing confidence, also chime in that the Gnomes are in league with the Frost Giant Jarl.

It doesn't take much. In short order, the Gnomes admit that they are wizard apprentices of the Frost Giant Shaman. Furthermore that they number only 2 of his total 7. Mai surmises that with so many apprentices, the Shaman must be powerful indeed, perhaps capable of 9th level spells. To those who do not understand, she explains that such power would make the Shaman one of the most formidable wizards in Erenth today. Gnostwick and Gnarlsley relate that they have been apprentices... as well as, captives from their youth. They have been raised in a palatial ice retreat far in the North, and only recently transported South with their Master -- the Shaman -- after he made common cause with the Jarl.

Both the Dwarves and Gnomes agree to sketch a map of the Jarls complex, as they know it. They warn that they are not privy to all of its secrets but only to those limited portions they have been able to see. Afterwards, the Dwarves relate that they too have been captives since their youth and only recently (within the last 6-9 moons) purchased by the Jarl for his use. Before then, they were captives of the Ogres in the recesses of the mountain sewers of Dynkyr's Rakag Mountains. They remember little of their youth except that they were taken from their surface homes by their own kind and carried off in the night to be given to goblins as slaves.

There are others, too, they warn. Some 260 additional dwarves originally of the Dynkyr plains; plus two prisoners who claim to be part of a war party from Dun Balnolmor; a handful of captives who were part of an expedition from Dun Oromir; and a smattering of those still remaining from Dun Festog. The party bids these 32 to join their peers in Hillsdale Shire. They are advised that when their beards have regrown they should go forth from the Shire to Wanderhalt, as it is the friendliest of human habitations for their kind.

Then, pushing the pyramid wagon until gravity takes over, the party rides it some miles further down the trough. They ride for several minutes before dismissing the Gnomes to ride the wagon wherever it leads and urging them to lead peaceable and good lives here ever after. Quin promises to kill them for the offense of aiding the Jarl, if ever they should return. During this period of time, Oghren does not see the need to treat with the Gnomes any longer and heaves one of the magical axes overboard, then leaps from the still rolling wagon to join it, and await alone for his friends' return. He recognizes only that he is saving himself a longer walk and does not stop to consider his danger.

The rest of the party eventually returns to the point at which they left Oghren, only to find both he and the giant-sized axe are missing. After walking and looking for almost an hour, they visited by a running Frost Giant, who pulls up short when he sees them and inspects them from a distance. The party first drives him off with arrows and then rides him down from griffon-back.

The party returns to the watchtower to rest and recuperate while they are treated to the sounds of snarling in the peaks around the trough, as well as, the distant howling of wolves. They spend the next several hours in uneasy recuperation as Fr. Patrick and Fr. Caeli make their rounds of ministration to the worried and injured. Meanwhile Mai secludes herself in the tower that overlooks the climb, and warns that she is not to be disturbed except by emergency.

Later that day, the party is joined by two additions. Nylah, an elf enchantress of the Mistwood, has followed this trough like a road for the last two weeks. She informs the party that it goes all the way from where she discovered it, above her forested home (some three hundred miles distant) to here, uninterrupted. They are also joined by their old friend Budokai and his page Jarvis, recently come from the Halfling inhabitation with news. It is too early in the day to retire, and snow has begun to fall in large sticky flakes, so the party decides to scout out towards the Jarl's complex. They hope to learn the nature of the snarling and howling along the way, and perhaps to learn the fate of their second dwarven companion gone missing.

They walk some three miles before coming to a large plateau made from a shorn mountain top. It is two miles long and a half mile, or so, wide. It appears as though a giant knife has simply come along and removed the top of the mountain and paved the resulting surface with cut block. It is a masterpiece of construction and doubtless unattainable without the use of powerful magic. It boggles the imagination that even dwarven engineers with legions of laborers could have done all this in less than a year.

About two miles away, rising high above the plain, a towering mountain peak can be seen. Even at this distance, Quin points out the illusion, and after concentrating, most of the party comes to realize it is not a mountain peak at all, but a phantasm which hides an immense castle complex with two huge battlements that rise some 200 feet above the trough. In the center of it, is set a large pair of doors, while a massive ramp leads from the trough to their step. Also, circling the castle walls like a patrolling dog, is a white dragon that quickly takes note of them and makes a bee line, keening loudly as it swiftly flies.

Mai immediately enchants Budokai and Sabretooth to fly and urges them to deal with the approaching threat as the rest of them retreat out of site of the distant battlements, whose occupants will surely notice them. As they secret themselves around the bend in the trough, they are surprised by the appearance of six Yeti who launch an attack, and seven winter wolves which lay back in wait.

The Yeti are aggressive but the party much more so. In less than three minutes the Winter wolves are little more than smouldering ruin. The Yeti have suffered only a couple of losses, but with so many of their allies slain, and the use of the fire magic employed by Mai, find their morale faltering. The remainder vault over the trough walls into the snowy mountainsides and immediately vanish from view. Meanwhile, the combined attacks of Budokai and Sabretooth have brought the young dragon down which crashes dead into the trough and skids for some seventy or eighty yards in the slippery new fallen powder before coming to a halt.

The party then turns in time to hear two thunderclaps. One after another, massive balls of ice and snow crash at their end of the great paved plateau. They fall right where the party was standing just moments ago. Here is another miracle of engineering and it is confirmed by Quin as no mere illusion! The towers impossibly command the entire plain with artillery of some sort. The fighters know that these fire at least 6 times as far as the finest Gnomish war machines devised and then with projectiles twenty times as large. Either one of those blasts might have halved or quartered an entire company of foot.

Just then, Budokai and Sabretooth inform the party that the massive double doors at the top of the distant ramp are opening. A moment later, another of the strange pyramid wagons emerges from the castle walls and begins picking up speed as it comes down the ramp. A few minutes later it crashes into the carcass of the dead dragon in the trough and sits idle. Sabretooth, still enchanted to fly, flies overhead and throws a molotov cocktail down on it and watches it succumb to the flames.  The rest of the party watches from a respectful distance and waits... for...

Quin is scanning in all directions, wondering if this is just a distraction. Sure enough, further along the path between the party and the watchtower he sees a portal opening and a great furred boot stepping out...

The next few moments are going to be exciting.

*edited to make peacable into peaceable. 3/17