DE 7 - Winter Phase

• With winter coming in the mountains, fighting grinds to a halt. The PC's will spend the winter in Nyremi City. Laurana is training with King Hesketos's court diviner (Auffroy Tirasse), located in the Temple Ward. She should thus be granted a warning that assassins are in town, albeit one that will tax her abilities.  

• Ash is learning the rudiments of Bardic lore by occasionally sneaking into the School of Bayan, also in the Temple Ward. 

• Brother Augustus, Alerius, and Therin are expanding the ranks of the Dawnseekers. The head of the order has granted them a small house in the Temple Ward to claim as their own and use as a separate chapterhouse. 

• Lady Yana spends a lot of her time accompanying the royal delegation on travels around the area, though not much actual travel is done in the winter. 

  • Storr is also serving in the King's household guard for the winter as "guests", mostly doing patrols and joining in small raids. He is intermittently out of the city on these missions. 

Summoned to Court - Word of the PC's doings with the black tablets has reached the ears of the King, and he is grateful.

Winter Festivals - There is the solstice festival practiced by the followers of the Old Path, and the "Queen's Festival" practiced by the Church of the Ten, sponsored by the priests of Komusta (Queen of the Gods) centered coincidentally on the solstice night. This will be an opportunity to overhear some of the war plans. Essentially every few blocks will be a new "bardic"... a big bonfire, lots of jumping around, drinking, dancing, and carrying on. A parade will move around the city with people dressed as the moons, the sun, various giants and old gods, and so forth. The golems will be prominently displayed and decorated with paint and streamers.

• Laurana - You have a dream.

• You are standing on a street corner outside the diviner's temple, watching a street procession go by, part of the normal winter festival, sipping hot mead from a horn cupped in your hands, the warmth a pleasant distraction from the chill afternoon air. The ground shakes as the stone golem in the center marches past... the city is guarded by a dozen of them, so even that isn't that unusual.

• In a tree across the street, you see a small group of crows or ravens in a tree, watching you silently. You notice that they all appear to be dead, decomposed, even partly skeletal, yet they act like normal birds - preening, cawing, et cetera. As you watch them, you fail to notice that the golem has stopped, and is looking down at you. It points at you... no, at your cup. You look down, and the cup boils over with a myriad of small spiders. As you recoil in horror and drop the horn, the crows suddenly burst forth from the tree, multiplying in numbers as they fly at you! Your drinking horn hits the ground, shattering and spilling human blood all over the ground in front of you.

• You wake and realize you've had this exact same dream three nights in a row when we start to play.

Spiders in Your Mead - The Vorokhoi would love to eliminate or capture the most powerful members of the gang - Laurana, Yana, and Brother Augustus... especially the sun priest. They have dispatched a team to Nyremi City, operating out of a small safehouse near the South Water Gate. The team includes an Assassin (Nur-Adad) with some magical weapons: two Baubau Daggers, and an Orb of Banderhogg Summoning. The assassin is accompanied by four Thugs (Balas, Dreknash, Fethros, and Nur-Halash) who are also skilled killers - three are dual wielders armed with shortswords, poisoned scabbard - daggers with carrion crawler slime (DMG258), and hand axes, and one is a sharpshooter armed with a heavy crossbow (+2d6 sneak attack) with two doses of Wyvern poison. The Banderhobb will be sent to capture Brother Augustus, as his presence is requested back at court by His Dark Majesty. There is a bounty for anyone who the assassin captures, so he will try if possible to capture them. If he is successful, Augustus will be put in a barrel and smuggled out of the city on a small boat which waits at the docks. 

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After defeating the assassins, the PC's decided to winter in the Sednarak Gorge and continue their fight despite the harsh conditions. After another close call in the Citadel, the Vorokhoi commander has decided to eliminate the PC's. 

The Senior Priest, having consulted with Mother Coranth on the matter has dispatched a war party of almost twenty to deal with the PC's. The group includes:

• Lord Captain Arkemoril (Veteran) AC-16/18, Battleaxe of Terror

• SGT Varas, a Thug sergeant AC 16/18

• Eight picked Guardsmen (his best troops, AC-15/17, with "Martial Advantage" - MM186 for the guards, and +4 to hit/+2 damage). All have chain shirts, broadswords and shields.

• A Thug sergeant AC 16/18 and six Scout archers provide accurate fire support. 

• Occult support is provided by a Priest with a BauBau Dagger and an Acolyte assistant, accompanied by the Ogre Zombie (AC-15, Splint-2). 

• They are accompanied by Nurgash and two Orcs, along as guides. This group is scouting ahead, as they have the highest woodland skills. One has a Vork Heavy Crossbow, while the other two have longbows.

Their plan is to let the Orcs locate the party, then close on them. The party will attempt to rush into close combat as soon as possible, as they are relatively weak on ranged combat. 

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Laurana has been carried off by the "Lord of the Mountain and the Ice Which Surrounds It", an Adult Silver Dragon. After she messed up his mountain, he grabbed her and flew her many miles to the north, dropping her in the middle of the woods with the Elves. The PC's will reunite with her in the future.