The party woke to the sounds of boulders bouncing off the sides of the shelter. (Fortunately, even though it was made of ice, it was as strong as stone.) Three frost giants and a half-dozen winter wolves were outside, figuring there was something interesting in the little house. After the somethings came out, there were less enthusiastic, mostly an account of being dead.
One frost giant was merely weekly, and he eventually told the party that they'd been out looking for pets for the last several days. An aerial servant had come by and told them that the frost giant king was going to marry off his daughter to whoever showed up with the most interesting pet. It had also wanted them to start a rebellion against the ice liches -- turns out the giants paid taxes to the liches for "upkeep of the land."
Ganeth used a comp lang on the rubbings from the chamber. The inscriptions all followed the general pattern:
To [action_i] your [object_m], you must [action_j] your [object_n].
where [action] could be "open", "look into", "look out of", or "look past"; [object] could be "eye" or "soul"; and there was no restriction on i, j, m, and n being equal or different.
The party set out north again, staying toward the east side of the valley and avoiding the cave they'd found yesterday. Some sort of glider flew overhead (above the air currents in the canyon); with eyes of the eagle Silvana saw that there was a kobold riding it. The kobold circled for a better look at the party and then moved off.
The party came to an area that was steaming and bubbling. Lots of worms were moving around there. The party avoided it.
Then they came to an area that showed evidence of a recent avalanche. Part of a large relief had been uncovered on the eastern wall of the crevice: A hooded human-looking face with three eyes (the third centered above the normal two). The lower eyes looked closed, but the upper eye looked open and appeared to be the start of a tunnel. In the distance, four mummies were carrying a large chest; the party picked up their backtrail and followed it to the eastern cliff face.
While the party was poking around, they were approached by a pair of kobolds in white winter clothing and snowshoes. One had a notepad, spoke Eastern Common, and asked a lot of questions in the name of Vecnar (the area's administrator, apparently), while the other kept a wand pointed at the party. The party gave their names as various members of the Shorin Clan (though Ganeth screwed up Kalis' middle name, producing both a Kalis Bluestar and a Kalis Northstar on the registry). The kobolds were not familiar with elves (not surprising, given the lack of trees in the area) and checked off "other" for race. The party said they were contractors brought in from outside to map the operations, and that they'd paid the necessary fees on the northern continent. When the kobold asked them who they worked for, Ganeth said "Kharnzeel"; the kobold looked as if he might have recognized the name but didn't say anything about it.
The kobold tried to direct them to the "dig site" (which seemed to be the chamber the party had found the day before), but they said they wanted to set up their base camp first. This turned out not be a problem, since the dig site wasn't due to reopen for another day or two. The kobold them warned them to be watchful for dwarven saboteurs, who've been tunneling into places and disrupting things. (To this kobold, dwarves were "bulky, associated with the element of fire, melt through ice, have flamethrowers, can tunnel out of anywhere, and are rarely above ground." The party was advised to withdraw and get help in the event of a dwarven incursion, since mappers were much of a match for fire and earth elementals. Finally, the kobold gave the party passes shaped like black diamonds (the card suit, not the jewels); each was inset with a red gem.
The party turned south again and found a small cave that seemed to be a cleared-out former troll lair. The place smelled of trash and ashes, and there were signs of fire and an explosion. Since the party was still pretty beat up, they decided to camp there until the next morning.
In the evening, the cave started feeling warmer, and back wall was becoming hot to the touch. Ganeth opened a passwall to get an idea of what was happening; the passage opened onto a very large chamber full of magma worms and rising lava.
The draft caught the attention of a dwarf in the area, who came walking over the lava to make his displeasure known. (Well, he was mostly a dwarf, apart from the red skin and flaming hair and beard -- the technical term is azer.)
- Beeel:
- "It doesn't seem to be extremely friendly."
- Silvana:
- "Of course not. It's a dwarf."
After various attempts at communication, the azer and Ganeth found they had Orcish in common. Eventually, Ganeth was able to convince the azer that most of the party were beard brothers of the mountain dwarves, and prductive conversation began.
- Azer:
- "We are dwarves...in some sense."
The valley was sitting on one of those secrets-under-the-mountain that Dumathoin likes to keep hidden for everyone's good ("what's down there is not beneficial to anyone"): a set of gates to the "realm of enslavers" (illithids), the "realm of watchers" (which come in many shapes, all with "too many eyes"), and somewhere else (which most of the recent activity has been focused on). Only one of the three gates can be open at a time, and they're all "essentially" in the same place. The door in the dig site was a planar boundary, and on the other side were areas containing puzzles that needed to be solved to open a specific gate, plus a common area for shifting puzzle pieces common to all three. Pieces could be removed and destroyed, but they would eventually re-form (though pieces that were tougher to destroy also took longer to replace). The trap symbol above the doorway changed as activity in the area progressed; the azer was not happy with the symbol the party showed him, fearing, "It will be giving them too much information." The good news was that any changes to the state of puzzle took about a day to propagate to the gates. The bad news was that moving, shaking, or destroying the door would create a planar rift, sticking the azers with a perpetual holding action trying to keep the gates closed. And the mixed news was that while the bad guys had been making progress, "They may not know how close they are."
Generally, nobody was crazy enough to mess with the gates -- even the ice liches knew better. About six months ago, Vecnar had taken over the ice lich organization, and work on the gates had begun. The azer was expecting the "cold ones" to move against them at some point, but internal frictions were slowing them down. There were, unsurprisingly, many factions at work in the area: at least two factions of ice liches, phasing spiders, eight-tentacled sea creatures capable of possessing creatures (in a magic jar sort of way), and some humans (or possibly elves) who'd been active against the cold ones.
The azer was willing to arrange a distraction to allow the party to get into the gate area and try to mess things up. His side could control rock formations and get the party anywhere on their side of the planar boundary; they could also send lots of lava pouring places, though not with precise timing.
The azers have been in this area since at least 1500 years ago, when they wiped out a fairly advanced orcish civilzation. The valley was there when the azers arrived.
Some other trivia from the azer: Gazing at a cyan hulk causes a slowing effect rather than confusion. There was a notable exodus through one of the gates several hundred years ago. And deep gnomes come in several varieties, each particularly involved with different "aspects" and having differing powers.
- Azer:
- "Some have said that gnomes combine the worst features of dwarven- and elvenkind."
The party dumped their passes extradimensional, and the azer had the party's cave sealed (except for some ventilation), keeping them safe from puddings and frost giants. A one-round scry of the entrance chamber showed two polar bear zombies and three flying ice liches; the liches were casting spells and examining things, possibly performing some kind of ritual. The next day, Ganeth and Beeel teleported to Hurricane's lab to report what they'd learned. (For future reference: People teleporting into Hurricane's pentagram are trapped there until he lets them out.)
After hearing the news, Hurricane advised that the party keep an eye on things and gather more information but avoid doing anything rash. He also mentioned as "common" knowledge that some All-Mothers had emerged from the Icelands and been transported elsewhere a few hundred year ago. Some beholders had come out at the same time, trying to control or destroy the All-Mothers; some of them were probably still in the Icelands somewhere.
Ganeth showed Hurricane the symbol from above the doorway. Hurricane confirmed that he couldn't talk about it, then did a double-take.
- Hurricant:
- "You saw this?"
- Ganeth:
- "It detected as a trap right above the doorway."
- Hurricane:
- "The situation is more serious than we had believed."
And then Ganeth mentioned the three-eyed head relief in the western cliffside.
- Hurricane:
- "The eye was open?"
- Ganeth:
- "Looked like a tunnel."
- Hurricane:
- "Whatever you're going to do, do it quickly."
Hurricane whipped up a batch of gas swarming with tiny living creatures that effectively blocks life sense for several turns. Ganeth relayed Silvana's request for a rod of cancellation; Hurricane had one and reluctantly loaned it out.
- Hurriance:
- "I would really like to have this back, so try not to use it if you can avoid it...but I'm crossing it off."