Vistra meeting Archmage Emberheart

Vistra missed the departure of the NGTC ships in the morning when the rest of the Avalanche left to the Jungle of Daggers. This was, contrary to what the rest of the party thought, not due to her having overslept, but rather her listening to a fascinating tale of a visiting scholar in The Happy Axe, the dwarven tavern of Stoneharbor.

   Vistra, as any responsible dwarf when forced to leave the secure lands she was destined to live on and to set sail, decided to first visit a tavern to ingest the appropriate amount of alcohol before her departure. When she entered The Happy Axe, unsurprisingly, she was the first drinking customer of the day. The 'Axe only had a single other person at the bar: an old male dwarf in a traveling cloak, eating his breakfast. Naturally, and not the least to soothe her nerves about her impending journey, Vistra decided to keep him company. She soon found out that the old man, whose name was Thralmid Emberheart, journeyed from the Kingdom of Iregion to visit the Roxfort Academy at Stoneharbor. A wizard to travel across the continent, when clearly he could have simply teleported, piqued Vistra's curiosity, and she decided to order a plate of minehog bacon and other dwarven delicacies, and engage Thralmid in a long discussion about his expertise and the reason for his visit. This had the unintended consequence that Vistra missed the Avalanche's departure, but did provide her with some interesting tales and keep her occupied until the rest of her party returned.

Archmage Emberheart, or simply "Thralmid" to his fellow dwarfs, was once a member of the Arcane Directorium of the old Imperium, then he helped King Carric establish his rule in Iregion. While Thralmid wasn't involved in the ruling decisions of Iregion in any official capacity, he told Vistra a couple of days later that "Carric hasn't forgotten his help", indicating that he might still have some sway over the wizard king. Vistra, drinking in every word of Thralmid, whether about Iregion or the Imperium, was ready to believe him this. An hour into their chance meeting at The Happy Axe the old wizard excused himself, but not before telling Vistra that he might be able to help her with "her small devil problem". Clearly, the Knights of the Holy Flame weren't the only ones who could detect deals made with the devils, be it one selling their soul or their services.

   Vistra, her curiosity peaked by Thralmid and the potential knowledge she might gain from him, met the old wizard again the next day, at the Library of the Eternal Fire. They have spent the morning in a side room, reserved by Thralmid for this meeting, where he showed Vistra several chapters in various tomes about devils and binding contracts, as well as his notes from a decade ago on the same subject. Apparently, Archmage Emberheart was famous (or infamous, depending who you ask) for annulling many contracts between devils and mortals a decade ago, when he found a loophole that got into about one in five of all such agreements. Regrettably, soon afterwards the devils caught unto their supposed slaves just walking off without consequences, and since then they have carefully reworded all of those standard contracts. That being said, Thralmid was confident that something can be learned from the devils' previous mistake and that no contract is without a loophole, thus he suggested that Vistra educate herself in his work and he himself also offered his services for the next several weeks, which he planned to spend in Stoneharbor.

And this is how it came to be that for the next weeks Vistra spent her mornings in the forge (crafting an armor for herself), her afternoons in the Library of Eternal Fire (reading and frequently falling asleep over intricate infernal legalese), and her evenings drinking with Thralmid at The Happy Axe and listening to his fascinating stories. This is how Vistra learned that it was only his high standing in Iregion that saved him from a couple of assassination attempts some years ago: unsurprisingly, certain devils didn't take kindly to him destroying their hard-earned status by releasing dozens of their binded souls from their services.

While initially this interlude was quite enjoyable and Vistra had high hopes for finding a way out of their contract for the Avalanche (naturally she routinely lied to Grep regarding her daily activities), after a few weeks it started to get boring and hopeless. When Thralmid left town in a few weeks, he told Vistra not to lose hope and that he will also continue to look for loopholes in the contract whose text Vistra has shared with him. With that, the two friends said their goodbyes, and not much later the rest of the Avalanche has returned from their adventure with a new friend, and the Frost Lodge became lively again.