62. Into the Ice

* Having dealt with House Alekto and Clan MacLeod in the Rumidian Northern Margraviate, Clwyd, Pyt, and Wilfred went with Nix to the Fifth Hell while Aerendyl sailed with their fledgling crew towards the island of Dougall's Waite, a place that looks out towards the frozen waters of the Frostflows. The trio in Hell had met first with the Lady Telphousila, and then accompanied her and Nix to report to Mephistopheles himself. Clwyd and Pyt were rewarded for their strength and potential, and Wilfred was again offered a deal should he choose to join a hellish household - he declined.
* The Lady Telphousila returned to her estate, leaving the trio with Nix and a small group of merregon guards. Nix then took the group shopping in some of the many magical workshops about the Fifth Hell.
	+ Clwyd and Pyt decide to trade in their Bracelets of Nondetection to get a bit of money off their purchases, deciding that they didn't much need to or have a chance at staying hidden with them much longer anyway.
	+ Clwyd gets her cloak enchanted into a Cloak of Protection.
	+ Pyt gets another enchantment laid on the sword Cormorant left him, now making it a +1 Flametongue Sabre of Speed.
	+ Wilfred gets himself a number of spell scrolls from the illusion school of magic: Magic Aura, Disguise Self, Major Image, and Silent Image. Clwyd also pays 2500gp to get Wilfred a Scroll of Seeming, thinking the spell might be useful for the group. Then they take a further 2500gp from their party funds to also get him a Scroll of Creation. Wilfred also gets himself 10 small glass beads to use in future spellcasting.
	+ They use 1000gp from the party funds to get Aerendyl another focus for his Scrying spell, and they get his Brimstone Cloak enchanted into a Cloak of Protection with the money the elf had given them, with Clwyd subsidising 900gp to the process.
	+ For their crew:
		- Wilfred grabs a rod of black ice (apparently from the plane of Quintessence) for Garret.
		- Pyt buys a Fell Iron Shield for Poe.
		- Clwyd buys a Fell Iron Shortsword for Poppy.
		- With their party funds, they buy Taylor a Fell Iron Rapier.
		- Wilfred finds a small bronze key for sale and buys it for Poop the brownie.
		- Pyt also buys two more sets of Sending Stones for them to pass out among the crew.
	+ With the money Aerendyl had passed on to Nix, the cambion went and got a special item he said was to offer 'just a little bit of temptation.' He returned with a thick band of red-and-black leather, a collar made from the flesh of a hell hound, still warm to the touch. With it, Aerendyl would be able to use his *wildshape* to turn himself into a hell hound.
* The group return to the Telphousila estate for the overnight. Wilfred uses a few sending spells to stay in touch with Aerendyl back in Terca Mahres.
	+ In the guesthouse, they see more of the usual hellish revels going on, with succubi out in force and decadent displays of food and drink about the place.
	+ They see Badger and have a bit of a talk with him. He's turned into a quiet man now, with searching eyes and an altogether haunted look. He congratulates them on becoming named pirates, as Nix has told him, and tells them people have taken to calling him 'Turncoat Badger' these days. It's hard to tell if he's bothered by the moniker or not.
	+ After the overnight, they decide to stay in the guesthouse for the day while Wilfred copies a few of his new scrolls to his spellbook.
	+ They confirm that they'll go with Nix to a casino down in the Sixth Hell on the following day.
* When time comes for them to go, they find themselves going again via Boatman over the River Styx. No guards accompanied them this time - just Clwyd, Pyt, Wilfred, Nix, and Dimitri the imp.
	+ On the way, well out of sight of land, Clwyd messed up telling the requisite story to get the Boatman to take them where they wanted to go. It stopped the small boat dead in the milky grey-blue waters of the river, face inscrutable as all of its kind ever are.
	+ Nix suggested they get the Boatman moving again quickly. Pyt attempts to pick up a new story but can't get into it enough to appease the shaytan.
	+ With the boat dead in the water, a large, bulbous, bipedal, humanoid toad attacks them from below the surface of the river - it is what's known as a Styx Toad, another of the shaytan, immune to the debilitating effects of the river's water, and apparently a stubborn and dangerous hunter when it has your scent.
	+ The battle is swift and fierce. Nix takes to the air and offers little more than moral support to the group. Clwyd blasts the thing with alacrity while the other two try a few different spells, unfortunately revealing that the toad is resistant to a number of magical effects. When it's eventually pushed back into the water, the toad whips up some waves with a *Control Water* spell of its own. The Boatman proves far too skilled an oarsman to let the ship capsize, but it still refused to provide any locomotion beyond keeping the boat afloat. Wilfred manages to trap the Styx Toad inside an orb formed of his *Wall of Force*, but the thing proves able to teleport out of it!
	+ With the waves from the creature's spell spraying water all over the deck, Pyt is unable to keep from being splashed by some of it - and immediately the Styx's *Feeblemind* effect renders him incapable of speech or complex thought, let alone magical combat.
	+ Wilfred is able to temporarily banish the toad, but in the time it buys them, they can't tell a story that the Boatman approves of enough to get the boat moving.
	+ They shift tactic. Wilfred calls the thing back and Clwyd wails on it before it can react. It makes one last effort to catch one of them, going for a *Suggestion* spell, but Wilfred successfully *Counterspells* that and sends the thing fleeing back below the water's surface.
	+ With Pyt now in a debilitated state, they decide it would be best to not press on to the casino. They ask Nix to tell the necessary story to get them back to the Telphousila estate, which he eventually does, but not before taking a moment to contemplate the scenario and how much power he holds over Wilfred Seabottom there in the middle of Hell, mostly alone, a mortal unsigned to any devil, on a little boat he can't get to move.
	+ The trio spend a final night in the Hells. They're having to watch Pyt very closely, feeding him, cleaning him, and so forth. Wilfred casts *Identify* to learn the extent of the magical effect that has addled his mind - finding it to be more powerful than anything the group has ever encountered before.
* The next day, Nix and Badger arrive, ready to take them back to Terca Mahres. They *Plane Shift* to the island of Dougall's Waite, at the top of the Northern Margraviate. It's now Fallingleaf 13.
	+ Nix says he and Badger will island hop their way around the Margraviate, eventually getting to Newwe Rumidia. Nix intends to see if he and House Telphousila could capitalise on the fall of Alekto's influence and the growing unrest - caused in no small part by the crew of *the Drunken Dragon*. They were also going to have a go at slaying the last of the Alekto devils that were still around - the trio of succubi, the chain devil, and whatever imps still remained.
	+ With that, Nix and Badger bade the group farewell and left.
	+ Clwyd and Wilfred asked around a bit and found themselves some lodging in the spare room of a kindly older woman's house, a woman who turned out to be the mayor of the fishing island, a lady by the name of Rhona Todd. She takes a liking to the enfeebled Pyt and is happy to cook for the little group while they stay.
	+ Wilfred keeps Aerendyl in the loop with liberal use of the *Sending* spell. He learns that the ship is still a number of days off, so they briefly settle themselves into life in a small-ish, cold water fishing town as winter approached.
	+ They get warm winter clothes for everyone (except Clwyd, who insists her *Fiendish Resilience* set to cold will be more than enough), they buy from the local fishermen -- and hear the tale of Seven Legs, a truly massive crab that everyone on the island has apparently had a run in with at some point, even though its said to live at the very bottom of the deepest waters off the island -- and they look after Pyt, who is mostly incapable of looking after himself.
	+ Aerendyl and the crew arrive six days after the trio did, on Fallingleaf 19 - delayed somewhat by storm weather.
	+ Aerendyl goes and meets the trio without the rest of the crew, so that they don't see Pyt in his enfeebled state. A quick casting of *Greater Restoration* - making use of one of the 15 Thrice Stones they'd found of Cecilia MacLeod to act as the spell component - and the fog in Pyt's mind clears. His memory of events after the river were fuzzy, but he was back to his old self.
	+ While he's at it, Aerendyl also heals the wound Wilfred picked up from the clay golems in Tortuga's Chaos of Clay, a bad bruise that wasn't healing on its own, using another of the thrice stones to do so.
	+ They pass on the magical gear they'd got for Aerendyl and the crew, and Wilfred hands out their warm winter furs - ice animal furs that traders are known to sell for a lot of cash in different climes, far from here. The colouring should also help them all to hide in the snow.
	+ Though he was a bit awkward and sheepish in asking, clearly quite embarrassed to have to do so, Alric implored Aerendyl to buy as much preserved or long-lasting food from Dougall's Waite as *the Drunken Dragon* could carry, to pass on to the people of the Black Salt Springs, who would be gearing up for a hard winter with his raid having been unsuccessful. Aerendyl and the rest of the party were happy to do so.
* They push off from Dougall's Waite the following day, Fallingleaf 20, and after a day or so of sailing, they encounter their first icebergs. They'd arrived at the sea of moving ice, the Frostflows.
	+ Soon the waters grow too treacherous to risk sailing normally, what with the unpredictable winds off the ice, the bergs floating freely, and the currents running wild below them.
	+ Alric suggests they move to rowing and just accept that the journey will be slow for them with their low numbers. The party have other ideas though. Aerendyl uses *Control Winds* to make the most of the sails, with Clwyd blasting icebergs they can't easily manoeuvre around, augmented by Aerendyl using *Tidal Wave* spells to push the debris out the way and Wilfred using *Wall of Force* where necessary to protect the ship. Altogether, they're able to shave significant time off the trip had they just rowed - and they're more conscious of time than ever with the River King's distant deadline of a year and a day hanging over them.
	+ Five days out from Dougall's Waite, Alric points out one of the wonders of the ice lands, a World Tree - a tree the size of a mountain, it's snowy topmost branches just poking out above the horizon on the less cloudy days. From then on, Alric uses the tree to navigate.
	+ In the downtime during their trip:
		- Clwyd pokes about the soul coins she got from Mephistopheles, not using any of them yet, but learning that they contain generations of MacLeod souls.
		- Pyt's speech patterns are getting more verbose and grandiose following Mephistopheles installing the distilled essence of Cecilia MacLeod's soul in his head as his 'Boon of Mind' - perhaps also influenced by the scrambling his brain received by touching the waters of the Styx.
		- Pyt also puts the finishing touches on a new spell, *Mislead*, which allows him to project, control, and see through a perfect illusory copy of himself. He pranks Wilfred with it a little and the two have a good laugh. When Wilfred reveals that he figured out the *Prestidigitation* spell, one that Pyt's been using for a while, the two of them sit facing each other, laughing their asses off, warming the other's clothes amidst the falling snow.
		- Wilfred puts in a bit of time trying to help Garret take control of his storm powers. The black ice rod proves unsuccessful at this time - Garret being a true novice to spell craft struggled with the concept of a focus. After Wilfred installs some wards and blocks both in Garret's mind and on his body, allowing him to focus solely on the sensation of the storm magic in his fingertips, Garret remarked that he could hear something above him and suddenly *Called Lightning* down on the ocean surface. While himself shaken by his own sudden display of raw power, Wilfred chalked it up as a complete success.
		- When he wasn't busy helping during the hours they could sail or tutoring Garret, Wilfred was pouring over Mackerel's last grimoire (*see below*).
	+ On the 17th day after leaving Dougall's Waite, *the Drunken Dragon* arrives at the mouth of a river running through a high-walled, icy fjord. It was so cold at this point that the hull of the little ship was constantly cracking a thin layer of ice and slush from the surface of the water.
	+ It's a further four days up the river, the going getting slower as the ice gets thicker. But eventually Alric has them move into a tributary, up to a frozen glade with a waterfall feeding it from above, and up on a shoreline where a great many longships had been stored.
* A short hike up from where they left the boat, and Alric took them into a narrow canyon gorge. The walls were lined with scaffold-like walkways, with ladders spanning the many levels from floor to canyon top, and houses build into the walls on both sides. They'd arrived at the Black Salt Springs - so named for the many volcanic hot springs that filled the canyon settlement and warmed the cold north-winter air dramatically compared with outside the canyon.
	+ Alric announces his arrival and has the group wait behind him, saying they may watch what comes next, but they weren't to interfere. Pale, strong, hard-edged people began to gather at the entrance of the small settlement before them.
	+ Soon a full crowd had gathered and Alric explained in a booming voice that he was the last of his raid, and that all 39 others had fallen. He said he stood there now as surrogate for all his shield brothers and sisters, and would have their kin step forward.
	+ A woman in her late-middle age walks up to Alric and punches him square in the face, sending him to the ground. She keeps pummelling him and none move to stop her. Alric himself doesn't block any of the blows. Soon she's crying, her face fierce even as the tears flow, and she keeps kicking him until she's satisfied.
	+ When she walks away and Alric staggers back to his feet, another steps forward, a man this time, and similarly beats him bloody.
	+ The third to step forward, a young woman, no older than her mid-20s, kisses Alric full on the lips and whispers 'goodbye.' Nothing more.
	+ A pair of children, no older than eight and ten, are walked up to Alric. The oldest of them asks for him to tell of their mother's final moments. Alric smiles as says 'Birgitte, daughter of Elor daughter of Maug died sinking her enemy's ship. Last I saw her, she was stuck with 8 arrows, best I could tell, and still she dove below their decks with a roar. Their ship sank soon after. And all of that she did without the light of the full moon above her. Rarely have I seen so mighty a warrior's end.'
	+ The next is a boy in his mid-teens. He explains that he never bested his father in wrestling and would have one more match now. They strip to the waist and despite his wounds, despite the boy's grief, Alric, the Little Giant, a squat fortress of a man, gives him no quarter. He has the boy pinned and weeping in an instant, more so for the grief than the pain, it seems.
	+ A man comes very close to Alric's face, stares deep into his eyes, and whispers 'it should have been me.' Suddenly Alric strikes him hard, full in the face, with his open palm, casting the man down to the floor. The crowd are laughing and even the man on the floor, despite his grief, seems satisfied with the response.
	+ A tall woman with sharp eyes walks up to Alric, says not a word, hands him a knife and then kneels down before him. He carefully cuts her long hair short, then runs the blade across her scalp to shave her head down to the skin. She takes the knife and leaves. Through the whole process, nobody said a word.
* But Alric can't fulfil all the obligations his people would ask of him here at the entrance to the Black Salt Springs. The party and their crew are invited into the village with a warm welcome for their help in bringing Alric and his news home, while Alric himself goes off to start repairing a widow's home in preparation for winter.

Information gleamed from Mackerel's 16th Grimoire, a book with two stab wounds running through it from cover to cover:

* By this point in her life, she was well entrenched as a member of the Coven of Covens.
* Mackerel always intended to build her own coven from her spawn, keeping them as pets and weapons in much the same way they would go on to keep their own minions and servants. This was a masterwork of subtlety on her end, and even she doubted that her offspring were always ignorant. This also explains why they didn't have as much loot, magic, or power as she did. Makes subtle mention that she reaps the lion's share of the benefits of being in the Coven of Covens.
* June and the Night Mother were not the only descendants to serve in Mackerel's coven. Mackerel preferred the mantle of crone for the power it offered, but slid back to the mantle of mother on a number of occasions to produce more children after the previous ones failed to become the tools she had hoped they would.
* The writing in the grimoire is vague, but it seems like she was hopeful that she'd learned from her previous two mistakes and was on the right track with the Night Mother, despite a spirited attempt or two at independence and rebellion from the child.
* June was a more passive interest, with Mackerel thinking that she might one day attempt a union of demon and fey with her granddaughter, but that it wasn't a priority; the girl seemed to trust and rely on her at least, so there was no rush.
* Mentions of how some spirited goblins traded captives to Mackerel for years in exchange for her giving them the formula for the potion of longevity and some other, undisclosed favours. Mentions that the head goblin had wonderful ambition and a lovely pet. With the nature of the trade, Mackerel could never kill these captives; their lives were not something the goblins could give away - they could only take them if they so chose, but the lives would not be theirs to give all the same. However, they could give Mackerel the captives' time, and that was what she got from them while they stayed on her island - the time they would have stayed in the captivity of the goblins had they not traded them to Mackerel.
* The book also talks about the founding of the Pirate Republic, a very positive outcome from the Night Mother's independent streak in Mackerel's eyes. All things considered, stirring up the volcanic activity turned out to be a good use of the power they'd drained from their captive, even if it wasn't what Mackerel had originally intended for its use. Further, the Night Mother's miasmic experiments inched her closer to shadow mastery, which Mackerel was very pleased for indeed.
* The regularity of tributes and the masses of new mortals to play with were great for Mackerel's various hobbies and ambitions, and the last 40 years of her life were very much defined by enjoying her time among the people of the Pirate Republic.