42. March 16, 2018

Jessa runs to Odette's aid, asks if she's okay. The last thing Odette can remember is being under the Imperial City with Ghard, in the caverns, and suddenly feeling faint a few minutes after entering. That is all she can remember...except that she had strange dreams after that and felt that she was in danger, but couldn't talk to anyone nor them to her. Odette asks Ghard who everyone is, and asks him for a synopsis of what happened. He gives a good summary of the events that happened to Odette. Jessa then gives a brief synopsis of the world events in the past several months.

Rumors of the First Emperor's Binding Stone and Deal-making for Power

Odette asks for her notebooks. She casts a spell, which seems to help her remember some things. She reveals she'd heard there was a Binding Stone beneath the Imperial City and she wanted to see if it was true. She says that if she's correct, the First Emperor made a pact with an otherworldly creature to help him win the War for Succession to become Emperor, after the Thelduin entered the fray and shifted the balance and he was suddenly losing the battle. He supposedly bargained with the otherworldly creature to make the iceberg and lock the Thelduin away. (We later speculate that since we learned the Thelduin themselves made the glacier for protection, that this otherworldly creature made things go wrong and they were trapped.) The agreement itself was in the Binding Stone per the rumor. She doesn't know why a stone was used, but rumor was it was secreted away, and in forming the pact, the otherworldly creature was given access to our world. It needed

sacrifices, and wanted creatures given to it. Odette thinks the pact gave it the monstrous races as sacrifices, which would account for the decline in monstrous races that happened when the humanoids started ascending. Somehow this is contained in this Binding Stone, sealing the pact.

Introducing Illial and the Thelduin City

Jessa turns to the new Thelduin girl and asks “do you understand us?” and the girl turns to the tiny dragon who telepathically responds “yes.” The girl responds via the dragon “I feel fine, I'm not hurting.” “My name is Illial.” Illial keeps looking around. The dead Thelduin were guards, says Illial, when we convey our sympathy for the deaths of her fellow Thelduin that the monster destroyed before we got here. She thinks there are other Thelduin everywhere, because this was a big city. However, because of the Binding Stone (if that's true), they are probably better off remaining in suspended animation for now, as long as no marauding ice wyrms try to eat their essences, since all Thelduin recovered by the Aerden have died.

Illial says that we're in the southern section of the Thelduin's city, on top of an observation tower of their main temple of learning (a university) used for celestial observation, and there were walkways connecting the tower to other buildings. We assume that the ice has collapsed the walkways, and we can see the stairs suspended in the ice that led to the arched walkways.

The Cathedral of Learning: History of the Thelduin and Encasing Themselves in Ice to Save Themselves

Everyone is feeling okay, so we descend the stairs beneath the trapdoor and go down into the tower. The steps are covered in frost and are slippery. There's a massive, 100-foot room at the bottom, with carved columns, it appears to be the main room in the temple. Lots of frescoes on the mosaics, and tiled mosaics, showing a pictorial history. And there are funny little stones, like the one Ghard found in the tunnel. As part of the mosaics, there are little basins at their base and they have many black stones in them. Illial says they are recording crystals; the Thelduin would record memories and scenes in them, that's what they used instead of writing their history. Jessa reaches out and touches one, but nothing happens. So she hands it to Illial (but keeps a finger on it), and it activates for Illial and shows a scene from the mosaic (interaction with humans, but the context is lost on us). Bel, Odette, and Illial find the oldest records and start to review history: the recordings summarize the history of how the Thelduin settled on ice plains, and as the plains changed over time, other humanoid races came into being. The Thelduin are creatures of ice and air —they came from the icy airy beyond and started sculpting the ice into what they wanted. But the other races came up from the dirty, dark below. The Thelduin taught things to the Aerden, who are people of air and earth (not of the dark and dirty earth) and the Aerden wanted to help prevent the ice from further receding to thank the Thelduin from teaching them about magic and other things. The Thelduin froze themselves solid in the ice to save themselves from a dark and dirty tentacled monstrosity that rose up and was going to try to consume the Thelduin with its maw. We can't determine if they had a plan for coming back out of the ice, and we suspect something went wrong and they got trapped.

The Sarcophagus Hidden Under the Temple

Jessa and Ghard find a hidden trapdoor in the floor and bust it open. In the center of the hidden room is a stone sarcophagus, about 8.5x4x4 (LWH). It has air holes in the top. Detecting for magic, the sarcophagus is mildly magical, and so are all the black recording stones, and the stone Ghard has (which he realizes is a recording stone), Illials' spellbook, and the tiny dragon. Nothing detects as evil.

Ghard pulls out his black stone, he wants to see what's on it. This is something an ice giant threw down to one of the camp guards, who gave it to Ghard. Illial accesses it; it's a recording of an older Thelduin woman in robes, speaking to several Thelduin garbed as people who belong in the Cathedral; they all lower her into the sarcophagus, and seal her in, and the door was sealed above. This happened shortly before the glacier was to encase the Thelduin in ice. The audio in the recording was garbled; the only word that Illial could pick up was “projection,” it was in the dialogue before everyone went down to the sarcophagus.

The Old Thelduin Woman's Story

We lift the lid. The Thelduin woman is in there and she is long-dead; a look of horror is on her face. We decide to Speak with Dead (we'll get 5 minutes) to learn what she knows. We decide to ask:

1. Why did you seal yourself in this container; what did you expect to gain from this action? (Protection)

2. Who made this glacier appear on the city? (Thelduin)

3. Why? What was it supposed to accomplish? (Protection)

4. How did the Thelduin plan to free themselves from the glacier, and after how long? (no response.) What are they doing in the glacier? (The Thelduin in the ice are “awaiting the ritual.”) What is the ritual? (The ritual was supposed to banish [unknown word, a Proper Name that sounds like “Bal-Tor-Kaliaa”].)

5. What went wrong? (no response.) What's the last thing you remember? (Being summoned to the power source.) What is the power source? (The focal point of the ritual. The ritual was supposed to banish [Proper Name]. The ritual was performed in Valkir.)

6. Do you know about the tentacled creature? (Yes.) What is it? (Proper Noun, the one that sounds like “Bal-Tor-Kaliaa.”) Was it a deity? Demi-god? (no response) How did the Thelduin plan to mitigate its threat? (With a ritual.) Was it allied with the King in the OldImperialCity [we state the name of the King who later became the First Emperor]? (Yes. She knows of the King, who was not yet an Emperor, of the Imperial City, and the King was opposed to the Thelduin. We ask what a binding stone is; she says it seals a covenant. And the King was working with (proper noun, Bal-Tor-Kaliaa.)

7. What is the greatest threat to your land? (Proper Noun, Bal-Tor-Kaliaa.)

8. Was the Whirlpool always there? (Yes. The whirlpool magic.)

9. What sleeps beneath the deep, in the Heart of the Lake? (Proper Noun, Bal-Tor-Kaliaa.)

10. What is the being that calls itself the Master? (no response)

11. Were the Thelduin allied with the Elven race? (No.) Related to them? (No.) What of the Dwarves? (No, not allied.)

12. What was your last conversation? (She thrashes around, screams, and then looks horrified, and says: “What is the location of our relatives, the living daughters of the Elven Duke, and how will we recognize the Sisters?” and then ceases speaking as the spell ends.)

The “last conversation” was the question that Jessa and Bel had the enchantress Dar Elissara, a.k.a., Elise, cast in Eastport City, in Valkir, [see July 20, 2014 notes] to try to Divine the answer to that question. Apparently, the spell must have summoned the Thelduin woman to the focal point [the dagger], which we know caused a gigantic explosion before Elise got any answers.

Odette is still spaced out, but she decides that she's ready to return south, and pays Ghard for his help with a bonus since he went beyond the original contract. She doesn't have any cash, but gives him her Ring of Mind Shielding +1, which shields the mind from thought-reading. (If the ring works, we speculate the ring could be why the Thelduin projection wasn't able to fully merge with Odette's mind, and why Odette retained her own mind now.)

We ask Illial what she wants to do now that she's freed from the ice. Illial was an elven princess, she was going to be queen someday. She knew vaguely that her people were going to be encased in ice for a while, but she wasn't involved in the planning with the adult Thelduin. The glacier appeared about 1,500 years ago, which is not ancient history for the Elven people or to the warriors who work for Khaerg the dwarven king; perhaps we can ask them for more history.

Illial Meets the Aerden Contingency

We dig our way back out of the tunnel, which collapsed at the entrance to the glacier. We meet a party of the Aerden digging to meet us. We ask for Druij and Aoife to please come to the tunnel; they do. They are amazed at seeing a live Thelduin. Illial explains to Aoife that she's a Thelduin princess, and that others should be encased in the ice, but she doesn't know if any others are still alive. Aoife is enthralled, and wants to be BFFs with Illial. Druij is amazed by it all.

We hear a crunch, then a high-pitched animal cry, that turns out to be the white dragon that is now perched on the edge or peak of the glacier. Illial's familiar whispers that something is controlling the big white dragon, and he doesn't know what it is, but it's not good. And then the mind-controlled dragon dives at us. (What could be powerful enough to control the mind of a dragon?!)