41

Rime Neverending
To end the Rime-Kissed Curse that sapped the Heartstone Gem of its energies, our heroes ventured into a Yuan-Ti ruin nestled in the icy depths of the Great Oak's roots. Fighting to its depths, they found a portal to the Plane of Ice and a vision of Icewind Dale bound to the Frostfell as the Cold Crone, Vurnis, and a muscular third figure stood in the glacial expanse. Closing the portal required severing its connection to a phylactery, which Tetro managed to do, barely keeping his hands in the process, now numb and rime-bitten.

Kuldahar

#Kulduhar Iselore had been unable to remove the Rime-Kissed Curse from the Heartstone Gem. The curse appeared to be bound to a physical item or phylactery, which was slowly leeching the artifact's energy for purposes unknown. Iselore suspected that Eirys took advantage of the wellsprings of magical potency underneath the Great Oak to deploy this curse. She believed a Yuan-Ti ruin, within which a portal had formed decades ago that lead to an attack in Kuldahar, was where the heroes would find answers.
#battle #Kulduhar Back in the cold of the Spine of the World, the visibility was terrible as the party crested a precipitous cliff side where the Yuan Ti ruins were located. Here they fought a growling yeti who sniffed them out in the snowblind mists, and they cut through an array of vine blights, which they determined were caused by glowing blue crystalline growths embedded in the roots of the Great Oak.
#battle #Kulduhar Tetro found a steep slide of a passageway into the depths of the caverns, while Fern investigated an illusory wall hiding a descending staircase. The shelled tortle hurtled down the slide with a push from Crank. Fern focused through Jarnathan the rat to head down the stairs. Oona and Gadget were the first to respond as the vine blights re-emerged, both in the current room and in the depths below where Tetro stood surrounded. It turned out that the blue crystals were regenerating the monsters. Adding to the dangers, stalactites and icicles masked the presence of piercers, or roper offspring, which dropped from the ceilings. When the fighting ceased and the party reconvened below, a half-eaten frozen explorer was looted to find a rope of climbing.
#Kulduhar Three Yuan-Ti statues signaled the beginning of the buried ruins. The statues were conspicuously made of clay scale, hands outstretched to hold a tablet, of which many lied about. Molting off the clay skin revealed the true bronze sheen of the statues and embossed glyphs that indicated which tablets they were meant to hold. A small shrine opened up within which they found a Seer's Starlight Cloak.
#battle #Kulduhar The lowest level of the cavern housed the crumbling remains of a Yuan Ti structure. Up its stairs a pulsing blue portal flooded the room with glacial light. The icy expanse they saw was the Frostfell, the Plane of Ice. Interacting with this rift was an ornate metallic box, energy seeping between it and the portal. Crank rushed past a hoard of enemies and went to shut the box, but the cold seered his hands, the box refusing to move. Before the party could properly deal with this phylactery, the frost salamander, roper, and vine blights in the room had to be slain.
#Kulduhar #TheRimeoftheFrostmaiden #TheChosen Peering into the Frostfell Portal, our heroes saw three figures in its distance. The first bore the owl head and beastial form of Auril. Back turned to the group and kneeling to her was a muscular nude figure they did not recognize. And head turned askance, peering directly through the portal, was Vurnis. She was dressed in white robes and bare-chested, the thick wounds across her throat clearly visible. She smiled in acknowledgement. Above them, in the distance, with ethereal borders draping across it was an aerial vision of Icewind Dale. It dawned on our heroes that this portal wasn't the only bridge between planes. Their encounters before, like with the frost salamander in the Lost Spire, the broken portal of Varrin Axebreaker that launched them into the Frostfell temporarily, and the gripings of Sloopidoop who attempted to portal out of Sunblight Fortress and landed at the wrong location. These were fundamentally linked occurrences.
#Kulduhar Investigating the phylactery and applying identify, Gadget deduced it was the source of the Rime-Kissed Curse and would take two hands to close. There would be a risk of losing these hands in the process. The party decided to use the dead explorer's hands as a buffer, Tetro pressing the deceased dwarf's palms against his own as he gripped the box to shut it. Frost began to overcome his fingers and arms. Tetro pushed through, ignoring the numbness and bite. The phylactery snapped shut, and the portal waned. Tetro's hands trembled; they would not be the same for a while he thought.

XP

Total XP: 25101

1000 ~ #Kulduhar COMPLETE

Loot

Rope of Climbing ~ Dead explorer's corpse ~ Tetro
Seer's Starlight Cloak ~ Yuan Ti Ruins ~ Crank