Session 56 (7 February 2018)

Note to readers: This is a session re-cap of an ongoing D&D 5th edition campaign set in a loosely adapted version of N. Robin Crossby's Hârn. A journal of sessions 1 through 54, beginning in February 2015, can be found here.

In-world date: 4 Ilvin 720 TR [first week of winter]
Moon: waxing crescent (full moon in 11 days)

Winter wolf
Credit: Unknown

After a hurried council of war, you plunge through the glowing blue portal... and emerge in a sunny but bitterly cold wintry landscape. Though there is no storm here, the cold bites even more deeply than before. You are in the midst of an open plain. As on the other side, a circle of jagged columns of ice surround the portal from which you have stepped. To the north and east, a forest of snow-draped evergreens lines the horizon. Rising above the treetops you can see a distant pale tower, its icy flanks reflecting the sun's rays like a mirror. You have little time to examine your surroundings further before another ice devil rushes toward you across the plain. As Dracul rushes to meet it in battle, the sound of howling reaches your ears through the crisp air as the first members of a pack of white lupine creatures emerge from the forest and lope across the plain in your direction.

The battle is fierce, but you prevail in the end. Loosing well-aimed arrows from atop an elephant (Cade), Juan and Galindo inflict devastating damage on the devil, equalling the mighty blows from Dracul's Searing Sword. Badly wounded, the ice devil attempts to flee but is brought low by a final arrow from Gil'Doren, whose fireballs had also decimated the pack of winter wolves.

"Crows in winter" by N. C. Wyeth

As silence descends over the battlefield, Dracul's eagle eyes zoom in on the parapets of the ice tower: an armoured figure, its features obscured by the gleaming metal helm on its head, stares in your direction. A flock of dark flyers spirals about the tower and peels away in your direction: crows. Servants of the tower, perhaps?