September 13, 2026
31st Thelkhastix
The gargoyle hurt Gunter badly, and the other Torchbearers leapt to his aid. They led the gargoyles like kites around the concentric barriers of the room, staying out of reach and striking from behind.
When the gargoyles had fallen, the party returned to the door. They checked it over thoroughly, and found that the handle was inscribed with the word “PUSH.” Vira stepped forward, rolled her eyes, and pulled instead.
A trapdoor opened beneath her feet and she plunged out of sight. A chute delivered her to a cylindrical tube of ice inscribed with runes. Blue fog billowed up from the floor; though she tried to beat her way through the ice walls, it chilled and slowed her until, covered with ice, she fell into suspended animation.
The others spiked the trapdoor open and began to rappel after her. Alwin went first, but when he came to the top of the tube, he let Magrun forward to insect the runes.
When Magrun put his head and shoulders into the tube, the blue fog began to rise. He pulled back and they waited for the freeze cycle to finish.
They were trying to find a way to lasso the Vira-icicle and pull her up without entering the tube themselves when a hatch on the side of the tube slid open. A shadowy figure began to slide Vira from the tube.
Magrun leapt down, braving a quick passage through the fog. It rose again, this time spilling out the open door. It struck the figure, which heaved the hatch partially shut, and worked quickly on Magrun. Alwin reeled him back up.
With the threat to Vira incapacitated, they decided to go through the door in the gargoyle room and try to find the intended entrance to the room she was in.
Pushing the handle, they safely descended a level. The stairs led them into a room carefully carved into the ice. It was decorated with vibrantly pink kitsch: a tapestry on the wall read, “DIE / CRY / HATE;” a mat in front of the door proudly showed a cracked heart and the words “ILL COME;” and a case on the wall held a legion of twee clay figurines in a lovingly modeled nightmare landscape suffering all manner of hellish torments.
They carefully made their way deeper into the complex. Navigating to a place below the gargoyle room, they found a laboratory. Several identical ice tubes stood on the far wall, surgical tables filled the middle of the room, and a furnace connected to pipes and machinery glowered at the other end.
They found Vira and the attendant that had removed her from the tube. It proved to be the surviving barbazu; they smashed it with hammers.
One of the machines proved to be a sauna with a set of instructions for “Devitrification procedures.” They put Vira and Magrun inside. Magrun recovered quickly, and the ice on Vira began to thaw.
The others found that one of the machines attached to the furnace was a heating element to a cauldron. They decanted several potions from it.
Vira thawed and rejoined them.
Then they heard Magrun uncharacteristically chirping and cooing, apparently at the furnace itself. Looking inside, they saw a magma mephit with a collar of rune-scribed ice. It introduced itself as Porphyro and begged them to release it.
They questioned it, and it told them that it had been enslaved by a winter hag, who forced it to work the furnace and let her two ice mephit lackeys bully it. Vira extracted a promise that it would lead them to the hag before trying to smash the collar. The magical reinforcement proved too great; they would need to find the key.
At that moment, a key turned in the lock of the lab, and a winter hag indeed entered. The party rushed her. She was protected by a veil of winds, but they closed and prevented her from getting any spells off, so she fought them with iron claws as long as a man’s forearm.
As Vira attacked, the hag caught her eye. Behind the hag appeared the thing Vira feared most in the world: the golden-haired, lace-shirted, hypnotic-gazing vampire lord that had once drained Teilo to the brink of death. She cried, “You can’t be here! Teilo killed you!” and fled melee. None of the others could see whom she was talking about.
Magrun stepped into the gap, but when he met the hag’s gaze, he saw Amarauth Silverstream, Kaiser Anselm’s former father-in-law and distant contender for the throne. He said, in reasonable terms, that the fey (that would be the elves and the hag) and the humans could work together if only the dwarf no longer plagued them. Magrun cried out and fled melee in his turn.
Still, they battered the hag and she retreated. They took a moment to dress their wounds. Porphyro suggested they run, and Vira promised that she would put the hag down instead. Swearing to kill an enemy is binding as part of her paladin vow.
They crept after the hag. Alwin’s elf eyes saw a secret door in the hall; they entered and found a bedroom which the hag had clearly just ransacked in preparation for a second round.
Vira cast a spell of seeing through illusions, and they pressed ahead. Leaving the hag’s living complex, they came to a great gallery below the harpy’s nest. The hag was crouching invisibly in the corner, and two ice mephits guarded the hall that the Torchbearers would have entered through if they had not discovered the secret door.
Vira pointed out the hag’s position. Alwin ran and tackled her, wrestling a hand over her terrifying eyes. Gunter and Dorethin shot down the ice mephits, and everyone convened on Alwin, hacking the space between his arms until the hag’s torn body became visible.
They gave the hag’s quarters a more thorough check. There, they found some treasure and a diary, excerpts from which are reproduced below.
