Ronin Session 41

Izaki awake and the group reunited, they forced open the freezing black ice doors and entered Angel Mountain. Easier said than done, as Sera found out when bare skin touched the black ice and seared with a cold akin to fire.

Dispelling the darkness, the group found themselves in a huge entrance hall with monolithic ice sculptures of a winged woman lining either wall. Up ahead was another black ice door, with a lizard's head carved into it. Finduilas speculated from her studies it was a dragon.

In a tremendous feat of strength, Matthias and Finduilas managed to fling the great portal off its hinges, shattering in on some steps. The stairs led into a bowl shaped room with an ice floor. At the far end was a quicksilver throne, bits of armor and hide littered around it. On the throne sat what looked like a dead, frozen king.

The group quickly discovered through a grizzly shadow that the king was in fact a white dragon! The dragon proved lethal in its attacks, but somewhat weak on the defense, and the group managed to kill it before it took out the kitty-with-sword.

Up until this point, Karb had been with the group, but he conveniently vanished. Sera began a bloody skinning process on the dragon, lusting for its precious scales and blanketing the ice with red. Amidst the skinning, the Entombed returned with two savage, pale bear-men at his side. He listed the offenses the group has committed and was nearly swayed by Matthias to simply take them to his Lady. However Sera was not in the mood to be a blood sacrifice and fought him, though half-way through the battle seemed to surrender to the idea for the better of the group. She tossed her things away and allowed the Entombed to drag her into ice.

Finduilas and Izaki fought hard to eventually crack and melt the ice, then retrieve Sera. The bear-men fled with their tails between their legs, and the Entombed, most annoyed with the group (this being the third time he'd faced them) damned them all to hell and left the job of their deaths to an unmet woman named Kurtlmach.

Izaki brought Sera to steps, the rest joining him. Finduilas quickly stripped and used her own body heat to get Sera warm again.

It wasn't long before the shadows deepened, lights went out, and the Lady of Black Ice herself materialized before the group. Savvy diplomacy on the part of Matthias prevented total annihilation, and gleaned a few choice pieces of information.

The Lady has no objections to the group destroying the link that connected Shalraza to the ice plane. In fact, she wanted it destroyed. In a glum gesture, she revealed that she herself was the link. A suicidal planar queen explained the only way to kill her was to enter the Forges of the Fire Plane and retrieving the Brand, an item able to impart the heat of a world core into the Lady and end her. In the blackness, she opened a portal, and the group followed a rush of heat into the unknown with but their wits and a protection from fire spell the Lady cast with an unknown duration.

Experience: 2500