Hammer 4, 1489
Dre'zel my love,
Eager to get an early start, we woke early and departed The Northern Light Tavern, heading to Frozenfar Epeditions to retrieve Jarthra.
After hiking up the side of Kelvin’s Cairn for a couple of hours, we heard the barking of dogs. Following the sound, we found five howling, and clearly emaciated, dogs in what must have been Garret's base camp. Soupmeister Steve fed the dogs bear meat. In a nearby crate, Saritu found 28 days' worth of rations. Ambrose found a note with instructions to find Vellynne Harpell in Bremen.
From the camp, I found tracks leading further up the mountainside. Following the tracks, we soon scaled an icy cliff, which was made easy with the help of Soupmeister Steve’s Rope of Climbing.
I spotted some goats grazing up ahead, and we safely skirted around them without incident. But soon after, they began bleating, and we heard a loud crack from above as an avalanche of snow began hurtling down on us. We all ran for the treeline, though I ran to run back to grab Saritu, barely managing to avoid us both being buried in the process. Soupmeister Steve was not so lucky and had to be dug out. While Boy and I were frantically digging him out, Talyth used her divine magic to destroy the surrounding snow, making it easy to retrieve him.
After hiking for another hour, we found Garrett’s corpse by an ice wall. He was carrying a magical stone that recorded his final thoughts. As we were investigating the scene, a pair of crag cats attacked. We made short work of the felines.
Using our ropes, we slowly climbed the ice wall. Not far from the top, we found a cave. I found Tiefeling and yeti tracks leading along a trail away from the cave. From within the cave, we heard sounds of distress. I silently ran in and saw a yeti baby toying with a small humanoid. The yeti’s full-grown mother stood by protectively. I alerted my companions to the situation, and Taimen persuaded the mother to trade the halfling for the crag cat meat we had retrieved. She had soon arranged the same bargain with the mother's mate, who we found returning to the cave.
The halfling, Perilou Fishfinger, was a member of Garrett’s expedition. He spoke of a necromancer named Vellynne Harpell who had hired them to retrieve The Codicil of White. He also mentioned that the party’s tiefling wizard, Astrix, fled up the mountain.
We decided to follow the trail and soon reached the peak, where we found a poem puzzle written on snowflake-shaped plinth. In the center of a gridded rise was a Tiefling reaching for something that only Saritu could see. He confirmed that the area was trapped and protected by magic. The poem read:
Ten snowflakes fall,
On tiles below,
Where exactly? Not e'en Auril’s druids know.
Column, row, must even be,
Either two or four, not one or three.
So place the ten, disclaim the odd,
Or be prepared to greet your god.
Talyth soon had the puzzle figured out, and we retrieved Astrix’s corpse while Saritu retrieved an invisible book. On Astrix, we found a spellbook, a Potion of Invisibility, a miner’s pick, and days' worth of rations.
From the summit, we had an excellent view of the surrounding lands and were able to spot the Black Cabin north of Lonelywood. We saw something bright fall from the sky and land far off in the tundra, where it seemed to explode.
Talyth felt compelled to try to commune with Auril, so we agreed to watch over her throughout the night.
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