A Sundered World: Wolf Mountain, Part 1

Cast

• Dymlos (level 1 human monk/level 4 spellsword)
• Miyoshi (level 5 nekobito shaman)
• Yao Lao (level 5 human monk)

Session Highlights

With the dwarves safe and the silver mine more or less secure, one of the dwarves, Kordek, tells Dymlos that he might know of a way to break the curse on his wife: sunlight.

Kordek hands Dymlos a stone-skull encased in crystal. The skull introduces himself as Thordrun, a pre-Sundering dwarven spirit, and explains that sunlight has cleansing properties, which should be doubly effective against the magic of the winter fae.

During the Sundering he recalls a wolf devouring the sun before burning to death. Thordrun can guide them there: one of them just needs to look through the crystal, moving it about until it glows, and head in that direction. The downside is that while they'll know about where to go, he isn't sure how far the wolf's corpse is, or exactly what to expect once they get there.

At fourteen cycles away, Kuanshai is the closest island in the general direction, so they each pack at least twenty cycles of food and water to be safe. Kuanshai is a dragon-corpse wrapped around a sphere of water. It's mostly inhabited by undine, but if they start to run out of supplies before they find the wolf, they can always head over there for water and fish.

But, before they can go anywhere they need a vessel.

After rescuing the dwarves they have plenty of cash left over, just not enough to purchase anything beyond a basic keelboat: outfitting it with weapons or an elemental collidor would have to be added on later. Dymlos also picks up sailing lessons while they're waiting for the dwarves to finish up some masterwork gear for them, because turns out none of them knew how to pilot it.

Luckily, once they head out the journey only takes them seven cycles. At first all they can see is a massive cloud of freezing mist, but as they sail inside discover dozens, possibly hundreds of colossal rune-engraved spearheads and wooden fragments floating about. Dymlos is easily able to sail around them; the real danger is a draugr that happened to be lurking atop one.

It leaps towards their vessel and grabs onto the bottom, crushing parts of the hull as it makes its way up the side. Dymlos tries to frantically remove the sail, since its their only means of propulsion and he doesn't want it to get damaged, while Lao and Miyoshi fight. The dragur is quite large, appearing as a skinless combination of man and bull. It tries blindly smashing them with its fist, but Lao and Miyoshi retreat to the other side of the boat.

Enraged, the draugr climbs onboard and attempts to knock Lao off the boat with a drifting-headbutt; he evades the clumsy attack, but before the draugr flies overboard it manages to cling to the ship's rail using its clawed toes. Dymlos and Lao both rush over, each taking a foot, prying it lose and shoving the draugr back into the icy mist. Dymlos quickly raises the sail back up, and they manage to get away before the draugr makes it back.

The rest of the journey takes them by some more spearheads and a massive chain, before they make it to a wide sheet of ice. The ship plummets down and smashes into the ice and snow: apparently the gravity here is heavily resonated, so they won't be able to just fly about. Worse, resonation requires numerous or considerably powerful minds, which means there's definitely something here imposing its beliefs on local reality.

Kordek and Savatar volunteer to stay behind with the ship, making repairs and keeping it safe from whatever might be out there. Even though the mist isn't as thick, the only thing they can see is the base of an immense mountain range. The trek takes about an hour, and after another hour or so of walking about they spot what looks to be a partially obscured cave entrance.

The opening is almost perfectly circular, and the interior is covered in a thick layer of a glistening, gelatinous substance. There are also countless tangled, semi-rigid growths, almost like roots, sprouting from the floor and walls. Thordrun presumes it to be one of the wolf's bones, now mostly hollowed out.

Their trek is slow and long, and every hour or so they stop to rest for a bit. After the fourth hour they spot flickering lights moving towards them. Miyoshi's eyes are better suited for the dark, and she realizes that they are in fact flames encased in the blackened bodies of wolf-like creatures. A half-dozen, lead by a considerably larger one, presumably the pack's alpha.

The alpha has the ability to breathe forth gouts of flame that invigorate the others, so Dymlos focuses on it using his frostbrand: it crumbles to ash after only a few strikes, and once most of the wolves are destroyed the rest flee. Among the ashes are glowing fragments that resemble crude fire cores. They are warm to the touch but don't cause damage.

The party pockets them: they'll need to investigate their properties, later. Assuming they make it back, of course.

Design & Development

This is sort of a way to stealth-test some Ashes After Ragnarok content. One of the locations in Midgard is the burned out husk of Skoll, who died after devouring the sun, which is really just a machine piloted by Sol (replaced later by her daughter, who pilots another "sun chariot").

Had to add a Sailor skill for Adam. It's a pretty situational thing so I don't think it will make it into Red Book core, but probably a nautical-themed issue of Delver.

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