Book 2, Chapter 3, Verse 11 - Acio Map!

After liberating the small arctic village, Sabux has a heart to heart with Gorefang and learns that Bodil may have headed into the mountains with a small band of orcs. Anisette tinkers with a sending stone to get a fix on incoming enemies, while Mona has a sushi party. Oh wait, the sushi party is only available VIA our Patreon feed😎 Find out what mister await our heroes in the ominous Dragonbone/spine/born mountains.

\*\*SPOILER ALERT\*\*

So the townsfolk are gathered in the courtyard and we're discussing the whereabouts of Bodil when this "huge... no large figure" came crashing into the fun. This is where we find our heroes and what will they do! They want to know where it came from and they want to bargain with hero points against re-rolling initiative. They start with 3 HP each to burn and Joey gets his start!

He uses it to smash a fist at Mona, who insults it's lack of boobs and gets a 44 point hit and feels bad on the inside (Joey eats his first HP, that was quick). He hits out again but misses. He activates his clay gollum to get another free action and hits for 22 points. Mona uses a Lay on Hands to pump some healing and steps up to swing, (joey eats two more HP) and finally hits for 12 points. Ani looks for some information and the list of what it's immune to is scary let alone the resistances. Listening to that and chooses to huck a frost vial and gets a Crit Hit with a 40 for 16 cold damage (with some splash for Mona). It went ok the first time but not the second. Joey drops the Hit POints left and its 157. So here we go! Sabux decides to fire a Ray of Frost and gets a Crit Hit on a 29 and gets to roll 10d10 getting 54 cold damge. Damn that must feel good. 103 to go.

The gollum is back, he moves up 10ft and another 10ft with second action putting him next to Sabux. He takes a swing and gets a 22 point hit and the monster ROLLS A 1. Mona wants to flank but Sabux is holding a weapon, and she gives Joey another tasty HP to get a 40 for a Crit Hit and the gollum takes 39 damage. "Slash slash mother..." says Laura as Mona goes in for another attack with a 35 getting a hit with 14 damage. That's 50 left. Ani is hiffing a heal at the back of Mona's head with a 25 point heal and an Alchemist fire at the monster and he takes 14 damage but everyone takes splash of 7 (not that they do because of resistances). Sabux spends a HP to get a 20 on the dice to hit and does 71 damage, freezing the monster and shattering it into shards that they have to roll to get out of the way. Mona takes 12 damage as the shards rip through her. But it's down!

Mona does some quick work on talking about what they're going to do with the villagers and clearing out the office paperwork. It's nighttime but Mona is searching through buildings and Sabux is talking to the people about getting them organised and safe. He meets a grey haired Orc Strongbow who was on the council and steps forward to provide leadership for the locals. She tells them that no one goes to the mountains anymore because it's dangerous. An evil spirit has spoiled the mountains. She looks up at all the lightning to emphasis this point. They discuss building a makeshift barrier and holidn the place so their boat can pick them up. (JULZ: ahahahaha selfish much?!? Hey your town is screwed but can you like sort it out so we can get a taxi in a bit? K. Ta. Dying) Mona hasn't found any written orders to show as evidence, but she has found a sending stone.

They have a chat about what to do with people (again). Mona goes to talk to Strongbow and Sabux goes to talk to Gorfang while Ani messes around with the Sending Stone. Sabux and Gorfang discuss the evil spirit of the mountains and their plans to head up there anyway. Gorfang says that he plans to stay and along with the other villagers act as a barrier to hold people off. Sabux asks of the clan details so that he can ensure that the baby is marked appropriately as per his own feelings of kinship to the clan. Gorfang also sketches out a basic map of the way they need to go and warns of "the mountain that flies" and other things to fear and entreats Sabi to find and protect his daughter. Ani is working to make the stones ping each other, checking the circuits out in order to reconfigure it. He finds out that there is another sending stone off to the west. He manages to pick up some messages from the stone off to the west and we find out that Thumper worked! Mona is asking Strongbow if they feel safe here, but Strongbow is more scared about their desire to go up the mountain, due to the unnatural cold and frozen nature of the caves. She warns of being careful of their souls, if frozen they will be unable to ascend. Mona appreciates the information but expresses their need to do the trip. She talks of bath tubs and bubbles with her for a bit before they all head to bed.

Sabux has to roll a will save and Joey asks what the worst nightmare that he could have right now. Woody responds that for Sabux it would be that Mona, Ani and Sabi had fought off the evil spirit, retreived Bodil and come back tot he village, only to find that the spirit had actually taken over Gorfang. He waits while they get into the room and he murders Ani and Mona and Bodil and the baby in front of Sabi. Then the Vez empire steps in and they've made a deal with this spirit to strap Sabi to a wheel outside as a monstrous Prince Kital is waiting for him to do serious damage. He wakes up thinking that there was a beautiful woman above him for a second and then feels wonderful. Considering the dream he just had that would be quite strange. He goes to find Mona and tells her, she asks if he wants sushi in response. Sabux just starts walking out of town and Ani goes running after him. He shares a poignant moment sharing their fears and sharing their strength, talking of making mistakes but being there for each other no matter what. (JULZ: ok that was beautiful. I nearly cried.)

Theyre hiking throught he foothills as they bleed into the mountains and it's cold. Freezing cold. Severe cold that Sabux has covered with 3 x 3rd level spells. They get to the cliff face and have to now climb up through the chimney in this crevice. Ani has a climb speed of 10ft seeing as he's a cave goblin and they all have climbing kits. Ani goes up and hammers in the pitons into the rocks as he goes to help the rest of the crew. Mona goes up next and makes it easy enough. Sabux gets up and now it repeats but everyone makes it up no problem. They come up on this icy ledge a plateau on the top of the glacier. They're facing three cave holes in the cliff face. The wind is roaring and there are particles of ice blowing that feel like sandpaper on their face making it hard to see as they trudge towards this stone edifice. As they approach it dawns on Sabux that these caves look far too regular to be natural. Ani casts Detect Magic to check if they're magic but it isn't, they're just more Made than eroded. Sabux pulls out the map to check it and it's ripped out of his hands by the fierce wind, never to return despite Mona's repeated cries to "Acio Map!".

They decide to investigate the biggest opening and trudge towards it, but Ani steps forward into what felt like a hole but manages to throw himself back. Looking down it's pitch black and it suddenly occurs to our heroes that they should probably tie themselves together. Mona is in the back, Ani in the middle and Sabux is leading the way. Hours seem to pass as they haul themselves towards the caves and finally reached the largest and darkest cave. Mona has her flaming swords out, Sabux casts darkvision on himself and they untie themselves seeing as the wind has dropped. Looking around they can see they're in a big cathedral cave with 50ft high ceilings and it looks like a sacred place by the alter and paintings all over the walls. These paintings seem to show these giant many legged ice blue monsters swarm around the top of the mountain, which was trying to fly away but they haul it back down. Those monsters have a preying mantis type top with many faceted eyes and mandibles and a spider type bottom that is big fat blue and bloated. There's only a few of them shown but they seem much bigger than everything else depicted. Orcs are shown in battle against strange aberration monsters and orcs feasting with something that looks a little like Mona but not. Mona states that they must be Day Walkers (JULZ: that's totally what I was thinking!) Who Joey refers to as the Dawn Walkers not long after that.

They took a look around and they can still see the mouth of the cave but it goes much deeper ahead of them. Time feels weird right now. They feel like it's night time but don't feel like they've been awake for 16 hours. The heroes are a bit thrown by that and decide to put some caution in place here. They put a piton in by the door and tie the rope and hold onto it as they walk in. They see more paintings of the Dawn Walkers meeting with orcs and elves and other paintings of these huge stone blocks being put into a pyramid shape. They keep walking this long rope tied together and the cave gets narrower and now they see Dawn Walkers with Dragons flying around. They walk more and now it's black in front and black behind and Ani's magic detect flares up to show it's magical darkness. They decide to walk forward more but just before they do that, Ani pulls out the radiation globe and it sheds a dim light in a 20ft radius around them. As they look this does not look natural anymore, they can see worked stone around them. They reach the end of their rope and they enter this big black chamber. They can hear their footsteps echoing on the stone in the darkness. They decide to keep going but put a piton in the rope to keep it there. Mona is in the front and Sabi in the back for an Ani sandwich. Mona is walking forward and is straining her ears and hears just before she sees it coming, that there is a drop. Along a bit is a bridge. They all realize that Ani saved their lives with that orb.

They look at the bridge and they see this stone 5ft wide bridge unsuspended and with no support pillars and they can't see the other side. (JULZ: nope nope nope nope nope - someone would have had to slap me with bravery) Mona has a pondering moment about if this is some kind of entrance to the top of the mountain thing before they tackle walking across this icy thin bridge. After Ani jokes briefly about pushing her off. They start crossing and everything is going pretty well when... Ani stumbles and kicks a stone down. They stop and listen and after a seemingly endless time they finally hear the tiniest clink of the stone hitting the ground. They walk for the longest time and the slight arch upwards changes to a downwards slope. Mona nearly loses it as she teeters on the edge but manages to walk confidently to the other side, Ani walks on, after some screwing around and gets over. Sabux is left on his own without any light and though his heart is racing, moves towards Mona's voice yelling to "combat crawl". (JULZ: I'm so nervous!!!!!!)

They investigate the wall of the ledge that they find themselves on and Mona finds a crack that feels funny in the wall. Mona decides to feel out the crack a bit more and checks for traps and doesn't find any. Sabi turns to Ani and says "Do we ever let Mona check for traps?" to which Ani replies "Not typically." So Sabi tries himself and also doesn't find any. So they decide to try and push on it and find some spongy rock that they rip off. They both start digging through the squishy spongy growth and Sabi finds a button and shortly afterwards, the doors open and they enter the 10x10 little room of the 'high transporter'. They put the orb away and all the lights go out and they cant see any buttons. Ani pulls it back out and the lights come back on and the doors close.

The buttons say: BH, B1, B(with star), 1, 2, 3 (2 & 3 have a little turn key next to it).

They decide to hit 1 and they feel the machine lurch. Who knows where it's going ... only Joey knows and you'll have to wait for the next episode to find out!