No more Paper Tigers

Growl!

Just our Lucas

And then down again.
:)

Changing classes is just plain Rudha-an

The average height of the Party just went up...

Can you see the light?

Leaving the four ominous black boxes and the corpses of the human thugs and snowlbears behind, the Party ride on towards the mountain itself.
During the night, as they make camp, a constant bright light can be seen crackling at the peak of Mount Snaefang.
Dokan squints against the painful brightness…
He can just make out a smaller separate light, seemingly in orbit around the primary one. It’s path seems quite slow but takes it beyond the width of the mountain itself.
Drawing his fellow tiefling towards him, he asks Niema what she can see at the mountain peak.
“What mountain?” is Niema’s unhelpful reply.

Owlbearly alive

Waking suddenly, the paradoxical demon/paladin opens his eyes to see Ghanash standing over him. Looking past the massive Dragon-born, he can make out the mortally injured but still wheezing snowlbear lying in a pool of it’s own blood.
Dokan had foolishly let his thirst for battle, cloud his judgment. He would have been safe in the ominous black box. Instead though he almost got himself killed trying to prove himself against a thousand pounds of fur, feathers and psychosis.
Still, four snowlbears…
He’d heard of them of course, but never actually seen one.
Everything he’d heard though, had been proven true. When he looked into their freakishly oversized eyes, all he saw was unrelenting hatred. The only way a battle with a snowlbear will end is with the death of either it or you.
Niema had finished off the last remaining human. No conversation. No interrogation. Just a quick and cold assassination.
The five humans were all big, muscular men, but not particularly skilled. Niema realises though, that they didn’t have to be with the snowlbears to do their fighting for them.
Orestes examines one of the massive black metal boxes. His father had been a carpenter, so he knew the difference between good and bad quality work. The engineering involved in these boxes though was beyond the best that he’d ever seen.
The box is about twelve feet long, by eight feet wide and eight feet tall. Inside it’s divided into two compartments. The larger one for the snowlbear, the smaller one for the handler.
The cog, ratchet system was amazing. Despite the sheer weight and strength of the murderously insane animal, he was able to drag it back quite easily.
Strong as he is, Orestes realises that he’d been very lucky breaking out of their hugs as often as he did.
Inside the handler section, Orestes realises that the human’s must have been living there for a while. Each tiny cabin had it’s own folding bed and store cupboard for food and personal belongings…
Lucas settles down to go through what they’d found…
The humans all had leather armour, long swords and crossbows. Pretty standard stuff, but they also had a fairly substantial amount of gold.
Each of the five had a purse containing 50gp. (250gp total)
(Exactly 50gp.)
The four brass horns they had were worth 5gp each.
The leader also had three more things of interest.
A silver whistle, worth 10gp.
A Shortsword +2 Berserkery 5,000gp
A Crossbow +2 of Thundering. 3,400gp
Off to the side, the disturbingly thin and tall Rhudha-an laughs as he plays with the amputated claws of the four snowlbears. Suddenly quiet, he looks to the bodies of the five human mercenaries…

Short cut to the chase

The Party ride on towards the massive mountain rising up before them. It’ll still be a good four days ride but they are well rested and well supplied.
It was surprising how much food the Gnomes had. Despite the Dragon taxes, their lack of farm workers and the current warm and dry spell, their crops and livestock are in abundance.
The road soon becomes a path, as it hasn’t been maintained in decades if not centuries.
Ghanash looks at the map Vin had given him.
It shows the way to a ‘secret’ entrance. It seems to be about a third the way up the mountain near another old Gnome settlement.
It also shows the way to the topmost and main entry point.
He’s puzzled by the weird drawing and labeling using the words ‘Snow catcher’ and ‘Lightning shield’. What could they be?
At the bottom of the map is written the number ‘42’. Apparently this is the code solution to get them through the ‘secret’ entrance.
Ghanash smoothes down his forehead frills.
Why would Vogir leave the code if he was planning to meet them there?
Humans. Always so bloody unreliable.

There's a light, over at the Finklestone place!

After waving the adventurers off, Petra Looks up at Vin from her mechanical chair. Adjusting her thick blanket, she smiles at her old friend. Since Sokoloff died, she’s relied on him more and more to run the village.
“Do you think they’ll succeed?”
Vin looks down at her impossibly wrinkled and leathery face.
“If what Vogir’s told us is correct, they’ll need to if we ever hope to see our kin again.”
Petra smiles and sucks on her corn pipe.
“Such a good boy. He reminds me so much of his grandfather… That Orc though… He reminds me of someone too… Someones?”
Vin waits for a moment before he realises that the old lady has fallen fast asleep.
Turning to the gate, Vin wheels her slowly back in.