"Grobly and I will lead. We will be a good distance out in front. If we run into trouble we will lead it back to the main group for an ambush."
With Tayanella and Grobly leading, the group moves into the tunnel already scouted after you hide the sled and set out traps.
Tayanella and Grobly stealth into the tunnel but after several miles they spot no life or any signs of inhabitation. The tunnel seems uneven in spots and there are times when you are going up or down, but it does seem that the tunnel was carved at ground level, wherever the 'ground' happens to flow. After about 4 miles in you estimate, the tunnel reach an intersection. It keeps going straight, but also branches to the right and left in a cross.
We'll wait for the others to close up and discuss which direction to head.
Is "straight" the right direction if we want to get closer to the temple?
yes straight would be the main direction you were going, but at this point the temple could be above, below, right or left as you are basically in the 'area' indicated by your commune spell.
The others catch up soon enough and you have to figure out which way to travel. Tayanella looks for clues.
The walls of the tunnel, look as though they are melted to keep them wide enough. Surely over time they would seep in or collapse slowly as the glacier shifted or moved. Something must be maintaining them. As she runs her fingertips over the somewhat smoothed walls, she feels a vibration from deep within the tunnel. The tunnel to the left, she feels the black soot filled ice tremble just a bit, as if some far off seismic shift or perhaps the glacier adjusting... or perhaps something else moving...
Karkoran will keep track of any twisting and winding tunnels we may go down and ensure we do not get lost. Otherwise he will follow Tayanella or Grobly's leads.
Yes, as a minotaur you are at no risk of getting lost should the tunnels honeycomb into a maze of confusion :)
"Straight ahead then."
The group pushes ahead straight. Tayanella leads them forward, as the rumbling to the left is likely to be nothing but trouble.
The group pushes for only about another mile and the tunnel is veering to the left more. Three more tunnels abruptly fork off from the main one all within about 100' of each other. One of them going sharply right, another upwards at a sharp angle to the left, and a third also to the left, straight but then running almost parallel to the one you are in at least for the first several hundred feet.
Again, we'll wait for the others to catch up and decide which way to go.
I lean towards exploring the one that heads upwards first.
"Heading upwards seems reasonable to me. Maybe we will come out on top somewhere."
"Agreed. Up sounds good." Ash strolls up with her raptors, all of them wrapped in warm furs.
The group heads upwards as the tunnel floor becomes ice rather than the bare ground. It inclines upwards fairly sharply, and in place it becomes so steep you need to stop and use rope and pitons to make your way up. The slippery surface does not help either.
Within a short while more tunnels honeycomb from the main branch. To the group one seems as good as the next, and ultimately you must decide on a general direction to go. Based on time and distance traveled, and Karkoran's ability to discern the layout of the tunnels traveled so far, you are still within what you think is the area of searching to find the temple.
Asheranthi and Lump both think that you have gone up in elevation about 1500 feet, but are who know how far under the glacier, perhaps several thousand feet still if the glacier is a mile thick.
"Any sign of tracks?"
Tayanella you find evidence of what looks like claw marks occasionally. Most of them are obscured by the smooth ice of the tunnel. The ice is so smoothe it appears as if ice as it melts in the warm sun and then refreezes when the temperature drops.
That would mean that however these tunnels were formed, the ice tube was literally melted by a lot of heat, after the steam recoalesced and water ran off to wherever it went, perhaps lower downward running tunnels, that the smooth surface was left behind. You wonder what could generate such heat.
Tayanella, you think back to some books you read in Goodwin's library. You have heard of a creature called a remorhaz that creates such tunnels in icy glaciated areas such as this. You know that they are huge creatures, but these tunnels are exceptionally large, and it would take a very very large specimen to create these via its burrowing. You ponder this as you feel in your feet a slight tremor, ever so slightly...
"I say we continue to head upwards. If we reach the surface, Grobly can scout from the air."
Tayanella continues to guide the group in an upwardly direction, selecting tunnels that seem to follow in that direction. The climb is arduous at times, and occasionally requires some backtracking. Having a minotaur in the group proves to be helpful as you barely even need to map the area, Karkoran is able to keep a mental picture of the tunnels in his head. Grobly scouts swiftly and silently on Bazzt, the dire bat's echolocation and flight in the large tunnels a boon to the group as they scout it out.
Tayanella and the others occasionally sense the tremors and rumble in the ice as something large moves through the glaciated ice or the ice itself shifts. You haven't quite determined which it is yet.
Tayanella is scouting ahead again after a few hours of difficult icy climbs up a fairly sheer icy surface and she comes over the lip of the end of the tunnel into a larger open cave.
Peering over the head with just her snakes, they look all about in many directions at once, scanning. The snakes seem uninterested, and the signals they send back to her brain seem to be clear of danger so she brings her own eyes above the edge stealthily crawling into the first large non tunnel chamber they have encountered.
Slipping slightly on the ice, her bow clattering some, she hopes she hasn't alerted anything. In any event, the slow climb up the sheer slope was anything but quiet the last short while. She waits for a bit and proceeds. Nothing flies from the dark to devour her so she motions and Grobly sails up on Bazzt's back with another length of rope, ready to attach it to another height further up to swiftly facilitate their vertical advance, when he discovers the large chamber Tayanella has entered. The bat rider swoops through it a few times gauging its size and possible contents. The chamber seems massive, On the order of two feet wide and perhaps the same long. The chamber seems to have been made in the same way as the tunnels, bored from the solid ice via heat, melting and shaping the ice, whether via magic, or the aforementioned remorhaz creature that arcane lore indicates may be a very real possibility in glacial regions.
Grobly moves swiftly on Bazzt and tries to take a cursory look. He doesn't notice anything particularly of interest, but is sure that he saw several large depressions in the ice, that could well be described as nests to the imaginative. The depressions seem to be covered by a more sheer and less 'black' layer of ice, but his dark vision was unable to penetrate within. More certain, bones of various creatures lay scattered about the ice cave, possibly remnants of a former meal? As he takes one more circle the silent bat flies close to the ceiling and Grobly spies a large clear plane of clearer ice there as well. The pocket similar to those on the floor.
The chamber seems massive, On the order of two feet wide and perhaps the same long
"We should investigate the entire room. It seems empty now. We should scout out the clear ice areas and see if they are nests or what, including the ceiling one. I recommend not splitting up in case something comes crashing home and we need to go nova on it."
Karkoran packs up all the climbing gear and makes his way into the room, and starts looking around, weapons drawn.
"It might be wise to ready defensive spells or precautions. I will start with these icy nest things."
Your group wanders the room, keeping in a fairly close grouping them, ready for something bad. You investigate the patches of clear ice. Each of them seems to be slightly clearer than the black glacial ice, but you can still see dark particles in this ice. It appears to have been melted and then refroze. You try to peer through the ice, but it is still thick and at least a foot think if not more.
Grobly flies Bazzt near the patch on the ceiling and hammers in several pitons with rope, so that he can hang and inspect the ice there in greater detail.
Grobly senses something different about this patch. It seems similar to the others but something seems to be glowing deep behind this patch of ice, very faintly.
Tayanella and Lump climb the ropes up to see if they can see anything interesting.
The medusa and grippli make it up the rope, using the sheer icy surface of the cave as a way to stabilize, even though it doesn't provide much useful surface to push off of.
As the trio reaches the ceiling, Karkoran and Asheranthi guard below with her pack of raptors.
The two of them also notice the glow, it seems to be throbbing our pulsing slowly as they hang there watching it.
Lump casts detect magic, and although the ice seems to be somewhat thick, he is able to get a slight emanation from it. Heavy and powerful transmutation, and evocation magic is in place.
The trio surmise that perhaps a magical device or artifact is buried in the ice, or maybe even some natural source of magical radiation, as they have heard of such things deep in the underdark.
Without chipping away the ice or using various magics, it will be impossible to learn much more.
"Do we have any way to make heat and melt the ice?"
"I have a few heatstones I purchased from the dwarves. We can try using them to soften the ice." Tayanalla says.
"If that doesn't work, maybe the elementals are worth a try."
"I've got nothing for fire."
The heatstones will definitely work as they will warm the area around it up to a much more comfortable level, but the ice melt will take hours if you are willing to wait. The stones last 24 hours, and it will be enough time to soften the ice somewhat at least, perhaps to a level you can carve chunks from it.
"I don't have any better idea than to use a couple of heatstones to warm the ice." Taya says.
"We can use another one to keep the rest of us warm."
Tayanella pulls one of the stones from her pack and strikes it against the hard ice to activate its alchemical properties. It soon starts to radiate heat that quickly warms a small area. To help keep the heap from dissipating you piton a few blankets to the ice area to trap the heat in, and any melted ice will drip down the wall keeping the blankets from getting wet. Now you merely need to wait. The trio climbs back down to the floor of the cave and the group sets up a camp at the bottom of the ropes, ever wary that you are likely in some creature's lair.
You set your camp up along the edge of the cave and make some food and wait for the heatstone to do its work. (It lasts 24 hours so you have some time to chillax)
We will try to keep the raptors (and my hair) from getting too sluggish in the cold.
"I too have a heatstone I can contribute if it will speed the process up."
Rather than make a bunch of noise cracking the ice, if we use a heatstone below we can place it near one of the ice areas we think are nests to melt though too. It can double to keep us warm at our camp too.
As usual he can cast Keep Watch when it comes time to rest. When it is time to prepare new extracts, he will prepare two blood transcriptions and use them to drink the troll blood to reveal any spells it may have had, and scribe any possible ones to his formula book.
"I'm curious if we are uncovering something of value, or something dangerous."
Day 18 - Evening into Night
The group sets up the heatstone close to the icy ceiling patch and another below near another patch and their camp. Leery of possible danger you take your night watch and keep an eye on things. Most of you feel from time to time the rumbling and tremors detected earlier in the day by Tayanella.
To melt away the ice, will take some time so you settle in and wait, the heatstones last a day so that will give some significant time to let them work at the ice.
Day 19 - Morning
You waken, or finish your watches and check in the melting ice. There has been significant ice loss in both places, on the floor the melted ice has pooled into a large puddle and will slow the continued melting there as the water insulates the ice beneath it. Above, the water runs down the wall or drips to the floor below and progress is going nicely. You have many more hours though before enough ice will be melted to notice anything it seems. The glow from within the ice is still deeper inside.
Lump casts a spell over the slushy remains of the melted ice, attempting to shape a crude water wheel that he can spin to force water out of the area they are trying to melt and onto the surrounding area, leaving it to freeze elsewhere.
A water wheel might be slightly beyond scope. At best it would be like stone shape with a 30% chance to not work if there are moving parts. Maybe a big scoop shovel would work better.
Tayanalla casts Mage Armor on herself because she's expecting trouble.
She walks over to where Lump is playing with the slush.
"Frogs, snakes, and lizards in the ice and snow, we should have picked a quest with a warmer climate." she says.
Day 19 - Afternoon
Lump works at flinging away the icy slush to allow the heatstone better access to the ice. Time passes through the day as the group more or less waits for the stones to work. In the interim you could also chip away at the ice with whatever tools you wanted to if you liked, although it makes more noise.
Eventually the clear ice below on the cave floor near the camp seems to have melted enough that you may be able to crack it and access whatever is frozen beneath the few remaining six inches or so.
Above the ice is still taking much longer, but the glow deeper within the ice seems to ebb stronger as the inches melt away.
We definitely break up the ice as much as possible to help speed up the process and once we are close to the ice below we will smash through it.
"I think Tayanella's preparations are wise, we need to be ready for something if we make more noise."
You smash away at the ice with your powerful hooves and after a few stomps, crack it open to reveal what lies beneath. It takes a few minutes to kick away and clear the chunks of ice once you have it broken.
It appears to be some sort of nest. In it are two eggs, as well as a pair of frozen corpses, perhaps food for whatever will eventually hatch. It seems odd that eggs would be frozen. You would think that even ice attuned creatures would hatch eggs through warmth.
As you examine the next, the earth and ice tremors. The rumbling this time much closer than ever before.
We may wish to prepare for battle now even more.
"Which way is that coming from?" Taya asks as she tests the draw of her bow.
It seems to be coming from a larger tunnel to the northeast if you concentrate. Your snake hair is particularly sensitive to vibrations, and you place them against the ground(ice). Though they seem displeased by the cold ice, you get a better sense from them regarding the vibrations, and then remove them from touching the ice before they become frostbitten. Keeping them under your hood and within the radius of the heatstone has improved their mood and alertness greatly.