29 - 1/16/25 : All Our Yesterdays

Like sands through the hourglass, everything we fight so desperately to protect slips through our fingers... and what remains... and what remains... is us. Only us, and the memory of our sin.   - Nevara, the Winter Witch

 

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  Although the party was taken by surprise by the spitting mimic's ploy, they were able to quickly dispatch it with minimal effort, as it posed little challenge compared to the brutal battles they had just survived. They continued south, seeking an exit from the grueling Caves of Hunger.   In the next cavern, the Lonesome Few discovered a humanoid figure entombed behind a sheet of ice. They were surprised when the figure, wrapped in the bandages and golden burial mask of a mummy, began to tap on the surface of the ice. Professor Skant identified the mummy's mask as an object of Hyperborean art, though still had trouble understanding that the Empire had long since fallen and thus questioned why the mask had corroded. Most of the party decided that it was not worth the trouble to free the creature, but Melfina's curiosity got the better of her, and she used the spell passwall to free the mummy.   Instead of springing from the wall and attacking the party, however, the mummy simply lumbered south through the cavern. The party followed behind, curious to see where it went, but they were surprised when their next discovery was a virile grove of pink-leaved trees, upon which grew succulent purple pears. A sight quite out of place in a frozen tunnel complex, and one that warranted investigation. Melfina and Veszaltyrr split off from the party to continue following the mummy, while Alithkav and Ragna investigate the grove.   After Ragna plucked a purple pear from one of the trees, a creature emerged from the trunk of the southernmost tree; a beautiful dryad, sporting pink petals that grew from branches affixed to her head, much like the trees she emerged from. She introduced herself as Hathowyn, and seemed amazed that someone had found her. She mentioned that she had slumbered for what seemed like eons, not perceiving the world around her, and only just came to awareness mere hours ago.   Since then, Hathowyn had only the vampires of the caves, as well as a nearby pack of nothics for company. Although neither group disturbed her grove, they were not ideal for conversation.   Veszaltyrr and Melfina continued to follow the mummy to the southern end of the tunnels, eventually watching it start down a particularly long and dark passageway. Not wanting to embark on a long venture without their companions, the two dark elves let the mummy wander off and returned to their companions at the grove.   While they spoke with Hathowyn, the Lonesome Few noticed a nearby pack of aberrant, one-eyed creatures lurking in a cave just shy of the grove. These appeared to be the nothics Hathowyn had mentioned, and the party sized the creatures up. With their knowledge of the creatures and their observation of their apprehensive behavior, they decided that the nothics were no threat and did not engage them.   It soon became clear that Hathowyn, after so much time imprisoned in the glacier in what seemed to her like a waking dream, was incredibly lonely and longed for conversation and company. When the party made ready to depart, she seemed devastated; Alith promised to return to the grove after their business in Ythryn was concluded, and this promise was commemorated as her name was magically etched onto the bark of one of Hathowyn's trees. The party also considered possibly moving the grove somehow to a more populated area, or possibly introducing the dryad to Ragna's brother Brynjar in the future, but their task had to come first.   Before leaving, the four travelers partook of one of Hathowyn's purple pears each. These pears conferred minor magical charms to those who consumed them; however, Melfina could not receive this benefit, as when the pear passed her lips, it crumbled into snow.   Bidding farewell to Hathowyn, the group continued searching through the caves and turned west. They came across a section of a ruined tower and several adorning statues jutting out of the ice, as well as a nearby giant-sized spear that pierced the floor of a nearby small cavern. Although the spear radiated with some sort of power, the party was interrupted from investigating it when they heard words coming from beyond the tower's walls; words of the drow language.   Hearing the tongue of their people incensed Melfina and Veszaltyrr, both of whom had long ago made enemies of their brethren and the the goddess that they served. Displaying a rare show of emotion as his brow furrowed and his brass grip tightened, Veszaltyrr readied himself and stepped forward with Melfina in tow. Alith and Ragna followed suit, eager for battle against the hated foes of their companions.   A lookout posted by the group of drow spotted the party as they approached, and recognized Veszaltyrr on sight. The lookout issued a warning in the drow tongue to his fellows.  

"Gaer! Uk chu p'los udossa! L'il katrillos d'Olath Luth'ol! Medri xull natha elghinyrr da're!"

  Veszaltyrr watched with a steeled gaze as the rest of the drow scouting party emerged from the tower, all laying eyes on a figure they had been taught to hate and fear since they were young; Veszaltyrr Oussndar, the "death bringer with a dead hand" and the infamous "Butcher of Olath Luth'ol". The leader of the drow, a mage with staff and robe in hand, spoke a command to his subordinates.  

"T'yin udos zhal naut belbau l'og'elend lil bel'la del kyorl'n Lolth orthae xanalress. Ori'gato udossa l'sith l'akai'zhar qu'elaeruk wun l'il t'larryo wiles del l'il kivvin."

  The mage then switched to the common tongue, not wishing to do Veszaltyrr the honor of witnessing Lolth's sacred tongue. The drow condemned the boogeyman of their nightmares and old wives tales, and sentenced him to death; he responded by engaging them with his magics, as the party followed him into battle.   The ensuing fight ended almost as soon as it began, and only one of the drow scouts was left alive, barely alive. As he attempted to crawl away with the last of his strength, Veszaltyrr used his magic to rise him from the ground like a puppeteer lifting a marionette. He demanded that the scout renounce the Queen of Arachnids, and give Veszaltyrr some small measure of hope that his people were not irrevocably lost to her chaotic web of lies.   The dying scout, however, only responded by crossing his fingers together in the shape of a web; a holy gesture of submission and fealty to Lolth. Veszaltyrr, his face firm and without any shows of emotion, grasped his hand together and forced the scout's spine to snap in half. Despite his steely gaze, Veszaltyrr's fury was made apparent as he continued to exert pressure on his prisoner's broken form, even though death had surely been instantaneous.   Once this act was done, Veszaltyrr turned back to the group, dusted himself off, and simply stated that he was ready to continue onwards. He suspected that the drow had come from a nearby passage to the Underdark, and thus concluded the entrance to Ythryn was likely not anywhere in the western end of the cavern; if it were, the drow would surely have found it and would have perished to the dangers lurking within.   As the Lonesome Few investigated the tower, Melfina came to realize that her condition continued to worsen. Her icy body, more elemental than mortal, was beginning to resist her attempts to move with grace and alacrity, slowing her to a degree well below her natural dexterity. Ragna took this as a bad sign that Melfina didn't have much time left, and they would have to find some way to help her before she completely froze over.   Within the tower, the group discovered the drow mage's belongings; a thermal cube, his spell book (which revealed his name to be 'Yilsebek', an obsidian scorpion brooch (a sigil upon which identified him as a member of the drow house Dalambra), and a half-empty body of elverquisst likely discovered in the nearby ruins. Despite being half-drained, the bottle was still likely worth thousands of gold pieces to the right people. Ragna decided to hold onto it, and expressed a desire to gift it to Speaker Olivessa in Honeybrook as thanks for her endeavors during the Everlasting Rime.   With the drow threat eliminated, the party returned to the strange giant spear they had found earlier. Although a primitive thing of sharp obsidian tied with rope to a wooden shaft, the weapon emitted a sense of power, and the sounds of distant war drums could be heard while beholding it. Ragna stepped forth and touched it; in response, a voice called out as the ghostly image of a frost giant appeared.  

"O warrior of two worlds, who walks across the bloodstained snow with the grace of a sabertooth tiger and with the might of a great mammoth. In you beats a heart worthy of the isejotunen. The great Jarlmoot has measured your axe-hand and your honorable wielding of the great Gjallarhorn. and found it worthy of commemoration and exaltation. What say you, warrior? Be you ready to submit yourself to the judgment and the valor of the Jarlmoot?"

  Proud to be recognized for their battle prowess by such fearsome warriors of ages past, Ragna agreed to be judged by the Jarlmoot. He proclaimed his titles - the Burning Blood, the Eternal Pyre, the Frozen Flame, and the bearer of the Gjallarhorn - and knelt before the spear as the giant spirits continued to speak.  

"Then let it be thus. The isejotunen once ruled this land, but they have been reduced to a broken shadow of their former glory. They are ghosts, or even worse, slaves. Brought low by the Ice Witch and the little barbarians in the north. But here stands one before us, who has raised his weapon to the skies, stood against the Ice Witches' winter, and broke the tide of their brethren with valor uncommon of warriors her size. In this moment, in this forgotten place, the Burning Blood, the Eternal Pyre, the Frozen Flame, stands taller than all the jarls, who are put to shame. Rise, child of the north. Within you beats a heart of purest black, yet your soul shines with the light of Fimbulwinter. Walk with your head held high, and with the strength of the giants in your arms."

  As Ragna was imbued with the light of Vlagomir's spark, the giant spirits vanished. Ragna rose to their feet, and the party immediately noticed that their barbarian comrade had grown a full foot in height. What's more, it seemed that Ragna was continuing to grow inch by inch, gradually and slowly, but surely. Excited by this development, Ragna returned to exploration with renewed vigor, slowly increasing strength, and a giant's imposing stature.   Unable to find anything else of note, the party made their way to the southeastern tunnel that the mummy had traveled through, and made their own way down the long and dark passageway. For several hours they walked, until at last they emerged in a massive ice cavern. Far from the darkness of the Caves of the Hunger, the cavern was illuminated by the dim and flickering lights of the its primary occupant; a large city built upon a disc-shaped formation, its skyline dominated by several sharp spires of black stone, and ruled by one gargantuan tower in the center.   In an open-air chamber beneath this grand tower, there floated a slowly rotating orb of light reminiscent of the very sun that once graced the Taiga's skies. The party immediately recognized this orb as the ultimate goal of their travels together; the Mythallar of Ythryn, and their key to ending La Saia's Everlasting Rime.   The Lonesome Few crossed a long causeway of ice onto a courtyard upon the grounds of Ythryn, having reached the lost undercity beneath mighty Hollowfaust at long last. Their initial surroundings were grim; there stood crystalline orbs emitting flickering, dying light as they struggled to hold onto the magic that powered them.   In the center of the courtyard rested a massive and disturbing sight; the corpse of a monstrous humanoid creature nearly twenty feet from featureless head to gangly toes. The creature's greyish, rubberlike skin seemed stretched thin over its form, and its head bore no features, instead looking like an ugly lump of flesh where something else should have been. Most remarkable of the creature's features, however, was the large mouth that opened in its stomach region, lined with rows of vicious teeth resembling stalagmites and stalactites.   With his expertise in arcanima, Veszaltyrr was able to recognize this creature as a tomb tapper; an earthen construct created by powerful wizards and made to hunt for artifacts in long lost dungeons, ruins, caves, and other forgotten locales. Tomb tappers were known to worship magical items, seeking them out and protecting them at all costs. Veszaltyrr surmised that this was likely why the tomb tapper was located in the lost city the party found themselves in, though it was also equally likely that the creature had been created by Ythryn's mages in days of old.   Proceeding forward to leave the courtyard, the party was surprised by the appearance of a ghostly image; that of an elven woman, bearing piercing blue eyes and snowy white hair. Seemingly unaware of the party, the image began to voice her memories and musings on Ythryn.  

"Ythryn. Our haven, bathed in the very breath of magic itself. Our refuge from the world. Our gilded cage. I often wonder... did we ever accomplish anything worth the cost? Is the world better for what we have done? I think on the faces that pass unto oblivion, and wonder just what it is that makes my life worth more than theirs. Minerva, my beloved... must this be our only path? How I long to show you the world beyond the structured existence forced upon you..."

  These words confirmed that which the party suspected; the ghostly image was in fact an echo of Nevara, the elven wizard from Hollowfaust who would eventually merge with La Saia and become the Frostmaiden known today. Recalling the diary penned by Nevara's hand discovered in her Lost Spire, the party also recognized the name Minerva as Nevara's beloved, whose salvation Nevara sought with such desperation that she forged a pact with the icy goddess she was now a part of.   After sharing her musings, the echo of Nevara slowly vanished, leaving the party to explore the ruins of Ythryn. They elected to approach a stadium-like structure, which was adorned with three fork-like protrusions from which crackling electricity sparked. Spotting a pedestal with a glimmering object atop it, Alith tried to grab the object with a mage hand so as to avoid the lightning above, but the pedestal seemed warded against touch and incinerated her mage hand in a shower of sparks.   Carefully, Alith descended to the pedestal to get a closer look at the object, finding it to be a trophy chalice forged of mythril and adorned with three precious gemstones. As she got closer, a voice rang out in the arena, declaring that challengers had entered the 'chain lightning arena', and that they should form a team of six. Melfina elected to sit such a contest out due to her increasing difficulties with movement, while her three companions stood in the north end of the arena, wondering how they would make a team of six.   As if to answer, the voice announced that summoned 'magen' would fill their ranks on the red team. Three red-robed humanoid figures appeared with flashes of magical light, blue of skin and completely bald. Six blue-robed magen were conjured on the opposite end of the field, and a dome of electricity appeared to cover the arena.   The group tried asking Professor Skant how chain lightning was played; Professor Skant laughed at what it assumed to be a jest, since it was completely convinced that everyone knew how to play Chain Lightning - the most popular sport among the magically educated of Hyperborea. Armed with no knowledge of the game, the party readied themselves as the disembodied announcer voice declared that a ball had been found. Professor Skant was teleported into the arena and grasped by one of the magen of the blue team, starting the game.   Despite their lack of knowledge of the sport, the party was able to quickly pick it up as they physically dominated their opponents with little trouble. Ragna's size and physical might made it easy to steal the 'ball' from the opposing team, and thus made it easy for himself and Alithkav to score eliminations by striking their opponents with the 'ball'.   Furthermore, they realized that by throwing the 'ball' through the electrically charged forks above them, the 'ball' would become charged itself, and would produce arcs of lightning when hitting a target. This resulted in two double eliminations, which easily secured a win fo the red team. The party claimed the mythril trophy for their victory, and when they realized it was enchanted to impart good luck to its wielder, it was decided that Alith would carry it.   Considering the nature of the magen that they had encountered, Alithkav and Veszaltyrr determined that they were likely a proprietary sort of conjured creature; specifically, they were probably a type of construct produced by a spell devised exclusively in Ythryn.   The party's next destination was one of the larger towers dotting Ythryn's grounds. The tower was adorned with a glowing symbol, which all three of the party's magic-users recognized as an archaic symbol for the school of Abjuration. They entered the tower and climbed to its top floor, finding a glowing anvil and hammer that was guarded by six armored, sword-wielding magen. They also spotted some sort of inscription on the tower's ceiling, though they could read it with accuracy without crossing the magen's defensive perimeter.   Alith enlarged Ragna with her magic, further bolstering the barbarian's already staggering size. The party then engaged the magen guards, intent on discovering the secrets of the anvil. Though the demos magen posed little threat, the battle was turned on its head as a living tomb tapper burst through the tower's damaged southern wall, having jumped a great distance to do so.   Wielding its deadly hammer capable of propelling itself with magical force, the tomb tapper proved a challenging opponnent for Ragna, who only rivaled the creature's size when enlarged. The tapper managed to badly wound Ragna, and nearly dragged Melfina into its deadly stomach-jaws. However, Alith's determination and persistence managed to inflict a great deal of wounds on the creature, ultimately felling it. As the tomb tapper collapsed, it fractured into a mixture of gravel and rock fragments.   The rest of the demos magen were dispatched quickly after, and the party was left with an empty tower. They turned their attention to the inscription, discovering it to be a peculiar script; the ancient language of High Boros, written in the draconic script. Alith, fluent in draconic and familiar with the written form of the language, was unable to read the inscription. However, Melfina's eyes of the Rune Keeper allowed her to decipher it.  

"First, shield thy heart with a wand from the Nether Oak."

  Professor Skant recognized this as one of the steps of a secret ritual, known as the Rite of the Arcane Octad. It explained that the Rite, when performed, would lower the impenetrable field surrounding the Mythallar of Ythryn, allowing access to the artifact and its phenomenal power. The party surmised that, given the eight schools of magic and the use of the word 'Octad', there were likely seven other steps, each hidden in the various towers throughout Ythryn.   As this realization was made, another echo of Nevara appeared, this time sharing memories related to the Tower of Abjuration's previous occupant.  

"High Abjurer Taruth was, true to his title, a guarded man. To him, the wholesale slaughter of the sacrificial lambs was worth the arcane might it afforded us. In power, there is safety, he would say. How envious he was of you, my lovely raven. How he longed to see himself seated in the Antecedent's tower, protecting his people according to his own vision, not taking orders from an archmagos half his age."

  The echo soon disappeared, as the last one had. Having sustained injuries and exhausted themselves since venturing through the Caves of Hunger, the party decided to fortify their position in the tower and rest for the night, hoping to cover more ground the next day before Melfina's condition could further worsen.   As the party slept, Alith was plagued with a vision in a dream. The vision appeared to be a memory, seen from the perspective of Nevara, as she shared an intimate embrace with another woman with pale skin and raven black hair. Alith determined that this woman must have been Minerva Iriolarthas, Antecedent of Ythryn before its fall and Nevara's lost lover.   Awakening the following day, the party saw that Ragna had grown significantly during the hours they slept. The barbarian was now approaching the huge size of the frost giants that had bestowed their blessing, putting into question Ragna's ability to navigate smaller passages and buildings.   The Lonesome Few departed the Tower of Abjuration, seeking their next destination. In particular, they sought the nether oak mentioned by the Abjuration step of the Arcane Octad, and began to seek a grove or garden of some kind where trees grew. Along the way, they came across a menacing building from which a red glow emanated, and decided to investigate.   The interior of the building housed several gated cells, revealing the building to be Ythryn's prison. Though the cells were empty, the party saw a curious sight in a nearby room through a collapsed wall. A gurney rested in the center of the room, and straps around it levitated in midair, jostling slighty as if being gently resisted. Suspecting an invisible being strapped to the gurney, Alith used faerie fire to unveil the room's occupant. Indeed, the invisibilty surrounding the figure dispersed, revealing its true form; a stark white-skinned man with similarly colored hair and blank eyes.