64. Malargylum

* At around 2pm on the day of Crawlfrost 4, the crew of *the Drunken Dragon* stand in the shadow of *the Blue Force*, flagship of the pirate lord in command of the ice lands and the Roof of the World, the Dawnfrost. The galleon's hull and masts appear to be made of blue ice; its mast and rigging are perfect, seamless, and white as snow; and it travels through frozen ground as a regular ship does the open ocean. It is crewed by the people Wilfred was shown by the Siblings of Agnor, people who were all once known as Old White Eyes, people who now seemed to go by titles rather than names.
	+ The woman known as Cut Throat called down to Ursula, relaying a message: 'Your life has too much by my personal wants, and for that I am truly sorry. I hope you can find it in you to forgive me, with the understanding that time grows short.'
	+ Two ice golems jump down from the deck and handle the bulk of shifting the supplies Ursula's people had brought on the short expedition - the tribute they were handing over to the Dawnfrost. The golems readily follow the orders of all *the Blue Force's* crew.
	+ When the supplies are fully loaded, the crew of *the Drunken Dragon* are invited aboard the ship.
	+ The man called Fencer is at the helm. Once everything is aboard, he starts shouting out orders and turning the ship around. Curiously, despite the size of the ship and complexity of the rigging, only one person is working each of the ship's masts, and the rigging seems to obey them readily.
	+ As the ship gets going, Fencer starts magically whipping up the winds around it, soon filling the sails with a gale force that would snap the masts and tear the cloth of lesser ships. They're practically flying over the icy landscape, moving faster than any sailing ship the party have ever seen.
	+ As the winds whip up, several members of the party see a number of tiny silver pseudodragons at the tops of the masts or happily soaring along on the heavy winds.
	+ The old man known as Tinker greets the party on deck. He's friendly, but doesn't offer up the answers to Wilfred's inquiries, simply saying that their leader would do the answering. All the same, he does his best to belay any fears the group may have and shows them all down to some quarters in the lower decks where they can all sleep.
	+ Four hours later and the ship slows from its breakneck pace, the magically stirred winds dying down. It still travelled at a clip as fast as any good sailing ship though.
	+ The party go out onto the deck in the night air, discovering that it is already unbelievably cold, even with their winter wear on. They get given some good food by Barkeep and see a great deal more silver pseudodragons - who come crowding around the food, sending off little bursts of their limited telepathy into everyone's minds, sharing emotions like 'curiosity,' 'interest,' 'hunger,' and 'excitement.' The party also learn that the woman known as Archer, stood at the ship's bow, was the one navigating for them, though they see no landmarks she could be using. They later learn that she keeps track of it all in her mind - she remembers which way north is and then pays attention to how fast they are travelling on which heading.
	+ The group return to their quarters, out of the cold and away from curious pseudodragons. They find Poop still hard at work engraving his little bronze key that Wilfred gave him.
	+ The next day and the day after, the helmsman calls out orders in the morning and whips up the winds to fill the sails for eight hours. The landscape gets more barren and featureless, and the air only gets colder, with each league they travel.
	+ Wilfred talks to the goliath man known as Seithr s well as Archer a few times on this journey. They're pleasant, but again don't answer the most pressing of his questions.
	+ On the morning of Crawlfrost 7, *the Blue Force* enters a valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. The ship plunges into a wall of thick fog about 40-feet-high that's resting at the bottom of this massive geographical bowl. It travels at a fast clip like that, with nothing clear in sight, for some time. Then the ship starts to slow. Before them lays their goal, an enormous white castle the size of a city, at once looming and almost invisible, blending into the fog around it.
* The party are led through enormous doors and down equally enormous, snaking corridors. Eventually, they arrive at a banquet hall. A great spread of food lays before them, and on its far side sits a mysterious figure: long silver-grey hair, an ageless face that could as easily belong to a 20-year-old as someone twice that or more, apparently human, but whether male or female was entirely a coin toss. But where everything else left the onlooker uncertain, their eyes held in them the knowing weight of an age beyond belief, and their irises bore no colour: old, white eyes.
	+ The figure bids they sit and assumes they're hungry from the journey. They start eating, heaping a shocking amount of food on their plate. Seeming them eat, the party and their crew also help themselves. The food is an impressive, eclectic mix of dishes from Rumidia, the Frostflow islands, and other places the group can't identify.
	+ Wilfred can't help himself but ask a great many pressing questions. The mysterious figure smiles at his eagerness and insists that he'll have his answers soon but that the process will involve quite a long story, so perhaps they should just eat and exchange some pleasantries first.
	+ When asked if they are the original Old White Eyes, the person nods, saying it's the name their enemies gave to them long ago. The others in their crew that have been called it in turn by their own enemies through the ages are less like apprentices, they say when asked, and more like children. Alongside this name given to them by their enemies, they have been known by two other names through time: 'Your kind,' they say to the party, 'dubbed me First Frost. A name that has since become Dawnfrost. And by my own people I was named Malargylum.'
	+ They talk a little more, but Malargylum becomes acutely aware of Wilfred's eagerness to hear the what they know and their reason for calling them all the way here. They put down their cutlery, dab their face with a napkin, stand with poise, and walk with purpose. They lead the group again through their snaking, too-large halls for an incongruously long time. Eventually they come to a set of doors much like many others they'd passed on the way, but when Malargylum pushes them open, the sudden biting cold of the Roof of the World announces loudly that the door's lead outside, to an area within the castle grounds. Thick fog again obscures much of the view other than that of a large, white staircase climbing up some 40 feet.
	+ They follow Malargylum up the stairs.

*The crew of the Drunken Dragon stood atop the stark-white staircase, on a half-circle as big as two ship decks. The icy air had their teeth chattering a chorus, their breath misting to join the curtain of fog before them. Malargylum stood before them at the platform’s edge. Before them the fog was a sheet of grey-white. Their arms started to move, and the fog soon swirled in response, rushing to follow their movements. They were a painter, the fog their monochrome canvas. Shapes began to form in the mist, a moving illustration of the tale they now shared.*

*‘In the early days of this world,’ they said, soft voice suddenly filled with gravity. ‘When your people were taking your first steps, when they were known only as the spry, the stout, and the shifting, the jötnar ruled.’ The fog showed pictures of three hunched, primative people -- what would one day become the halflings and gnomes, the reefbeards and ironoars, and the humans and elves -- hiding in fear of towering, sharp-faced, bald-headed giants. ‘These jötnar were born from the earth and clay of Terca Mahres and grew to work and shape that earth and clay in turn.’ In the fog, the giants were constructing large monuments and homes.*

*‘The first great change to come was the arrival of new jötnar, not born of earth and stone, not born of Terca Mahres at all. These jötnar had been born from the skies, and they came from far away.’*

*The fog showed a new giant, still hulking compared to the humanoids, but smaller and slighter than the earlier giants, with vast manes of flowing hair. The fog kept swirling in response to Malargylum’s movements, showing the two giants fighting at first, then forming bonds, and eventually birthing children.*

*‘The union of earth and sky gave rise to the greatest of the jötnar. Stronger, bolder than either progenitor, born to be masters of this world.’*

*The child giants were shown growing quickly, becoming the masters of their parents, instructing the construction of enormous cities and empires that spanned the world. The crew of the Drunken Dragon recognised their type well, they’d seen one such a creature in the heart of a storm, commanding the tempest’s wind and lightning: storm giants.*

*Suddenly, the fog grew still. Its colour darkened, but no shapes formed on it. Malargylum kept talking. ‘The next great change was the Moon Queen’s many Wars of Sealing. The world knew more conflict, it was shaped and reshaped again. By the end, its bountiful Wild was locked in the place your people know it well to be, the place where it remains.*

*‘I was not present at any of these happenings, and I never spoke to one who was. I offer them now in this second-, perhaps third-hand form only for some meagre context.’ Malargylum turned to face the group now, still flicking their arms and wrists this way and that, the fog behind them continuing to swirl, still growing thicker and darker. ‘What comes next, though, I know well. For in the wake of Faerie’s wars and the disorder they’d caused the jötnar castes, their greatest enemies arrived. This was the world’s third great change.*

*‘Through all of this, your people suffered and endured. You gleaned some scraps from your oppressors: some crafts and artifice from the jötnar, some little magics from their enemy. But always you suffered. As is the nature of these things, you put your own names to your masters, names that have only grown in power and import since.*

*‘The jötnar, of course, you had named giants. Their enemies. . .’ Malargylum stepped backwards, to be swallowed by the churning mists.*

*The crew of the Drunken Dragon heard no sound of impact, as if Malargylum hadn’t fallen off the edge of the platform. Wilfred stepped forward, curiosity overriding the attention the bone-chilling cold demanded of him. The gnome stood at the edge of the half-circular platform, before the wall of churning fog. And there he saw a great, white eye creep forward, its pupil a vertical slit as tall as himself. The sound of racing ice cracks filled the air from below. Then a thundering step forwards, a deafening boom. More cracking ice. The fog seemed to pull back, revealing rows of perfect, silver scales that circled outwards from that old, white eye. Scales that matched the one Wilfred wore around his neck. The great head snaked forward on a sinuous, shining neck, coming to rest just above and before Wilfred.*

*‘Their enemies,’ Malargylum said, voice now a rumble as old as the earth, ‘you named dragons.’*

*When the first wave of awe washed passed them, Wilfred and the rest of the group could sense that something was . . . wrong about the ancient dragon. White ice and frost covered much of the right side of their face, sealing the eye shut, threatening to do the same to their jaw. Icicles as long as a human hung from every ridge of their reptilian face on that side. The haunch of their front shoulder on that side was the same. And what little of their right wing they could make out through the fog appeared in the same state, folded unnaturally as it was weighed down by the weight of the ice clinging to it.*

*The icy fog began to roll over the surface of the platform the crew stood on, swirling about their knees and waists. Malargylum now began painting their moving pictures around their audience. The ice about their mouth had frozen over, and it snapped like a great oak bough as they began speaking once more.*

*‘We dragons dismantled the cities the jötnar had built. We made our own. The jötnar destroyed our empires, and rebuilt their own in turn. We were the stronger individuals, but the jötnar were fecund in a way as to rival your own people - the numbers were theirs. Both sides were long versed in war, and both of us were ruled by pride.*

*‘These times were cataclysmic, and we came to know the worst of our enemy, as well as the worst side of ourselves. The weapons we each forged to hurt the other forever marked the world. The jötnar forged new castes, one each impervious to our fires and ice. We formed new drakes and folk to ride them into war, far more brood-quick and expendable that ourselves. These armies clashed and much time passed, and your people weathered it all. A name you gave to these dark days: the Wars of Power.*

*‘Eventually, we produced our strongest, foulest weapons of war. But the jötnar were first. It was a long time before we came to understand even the little we now do about what they released on us. Those early decades we spent in ignorance were the worst by far, for the jötnar weapon turned us against ourselves, against each other.*

*‘The longer my kind live, unlike most, the stronger we grow. A dragon the day of its natural death is the strongest it has been in all its life. And somehow, the jötnar’s weapon, be it curse or magic or some other malediction, turned that strength against us. It ate our minds the stronger we grew, turning us into senseless beasts, and it ate our bodies as we grew, making our inner, inner power run so wild as to harm even ourselves. Dragons of fire burned to cinders from within, dragons of acid melted through, dragons of poison growing sick and diseased. And dragons of ice,’ Malargylum turned their massive head to show where the frost was growing even then all over one side, ‘frozen from within.*

*‘Either we killed ourselves with our inner power, or we went mad first and started killing each other. It destroyed us, this weapon. Turned us into animals. Feasted on our minds and bodies. We called it the dracophage.*

*‘We rallied ourselves and we crafted our own sin in response. We pooled our inner power, and poured it into the elements of the world, breathed life into them - life to the fire, to the water, to the wind, to the earth - and we made them want only to destroy. The jötnar amassed their armies and slayed each weapon in turn, each time a victory paid for with many lives. They thought then that they’d won at last, but our elemental weapons were not done. They had only just begun. For as long as there was kindling in the world for flames to burn, as long as there was oceans for the water to return to, as long as there was wind in the sky, and as long as the earth still stood, the weapons would be reborn in their element and would ravage the world anew.*

*‘At this time, with the four elemental weapons and phage-mad dragons ravaging the world, even the wisest thought it the end of times, the end of Terca Mahres. Our great empires were long scattered to dust and ruin, our great peoples both reduced to a remnant of a remnant. The call came too late for sure, but blessed that it came at all. The call to end these Wars of Power. The call to end it all.*

*‘My kind found an accord with the jötnar, shattering the shackles of our castes to do so. And when it came time to fight our final battles, to slay my maddened kin and bind the elemental weapons, giant and dragon stood together then as one.*

*‘The phage could not be taken from us, so we found ways to retreat from it. Many fled to the Astral Sea, the Space between Spaces, the Space without Time, where at least the phage would grow no worse. Others chose to change themselves, to give up their power that the phage drew strength from.’ The fog showed a great many silver dragons entering cocoons of ice and fog, to emerge as little pseudodragons free of the mark of the dracophage. ‘The little ones that fill these halls are the many descendants of my old comrades.*

*‘I myself am the last of them, preserved by my in-born magics alone.’ Malargylum then raised their great left leg and began tracing in the air with a claw as long as a ship mast, deep draconic incantations rumbled in their throat, and when they released the spell, the parasitic ice consuming their right side receded and began to flake off, scattering like diamond dust. But it didn’t recede all the way. The phage still held. ‘Sadly, my magics have their limit, and the phage grows stronger with each day I age. I know that soon my regeneration will fail to beat it back and it will claim me - body or mind first, I’m not yet sure. But claim me it will, and I seek to hand over my duty before them.*

*‘For just as the phage could not be undone, neither could the elemental weapons. Once we’d beaten them in the last days of the Wars, all we could do was seal them and stand steward. The jötnar of the sky bound the tempest with a constant tandem of their sky magics. The jötnar of the storms chained the titan deep below the waves. The phoenix egg was taken by fire dragons when they journeyed into the Astral, so that it might never hatch again. And the leviathan we guarded here.’*

*With a mighty flap of their wings, Malargylum banished the fog to the very edges of the enormous courtyard, revealing them to be standing on a great, frozen lake. And there, coiled up below the surface, serpent mouth sealed in a roar, was the leviathan. Its snake-like coils would and wrapped all around the lake, dwarfing even Malargylum in size. And even as they watched, little spiderweb cracks crept along the frozen surface where the great weapon raged against its cage, raged to be free.*

*Malargylum flapped their wings a few more times, sending jets of icy wind through the crew. The dragon reared up on their hind legs, then released a roaring torrent of frigid ice down on the surface of the lake from their mouth, chasing each crack and break in the leviathan’s seal, freezing it all whole again. When they finished, they sprang forwards like a cat, beat their wings once, and shrank as they soared, landing gracefully on the edge of the platform, in the form of an androgynous, ageless human once more.*

*‘Yes, I seek to pass over the duty of watching the leviathan’s seal before the phage claims me, and it is for this reason you have come to wear one of my scales about your neck, Wilfred Seabottom.’*

*Wilfred was in shock. So much new information. His jaw worked a few times before he found the words. ‘You. . . you wanted the mages’ help. My parents. . .’ So much information, but still no answers.*

*Malargylum smiled. ‘I did. I do still. Come, there is more yet to tell before we dive into my questions for you.’*

*Malargylum led the group back inside and through the winding corridors of the dragon castle. They spoke casually as they led. ‘Do you know the simulacrum spell, Wilfred? The means through which an illusion of ice and snow can be rendered into a facsimile of life?’*

*‘I know of it, yes, but I’m not able to perform such a spell yet.’*

*Malargylum studied him with their ancient eyes then, but it was hard to tell what the look meant. Disapproval? Perhaps an appraisal? Eventually the creature turned their gaze forward and an almost wistful tone coloured their voice for a moment. ‘I was the one that first taught your kind the spell, though I’ve never been as limited with its application and you seem to be.*

*‘More to the point, I have long been fascinated by your lives. So short, but so full of. . . well. . . life! I have always found you a wonder, and even kept as I am here at the Roof of the World, I have still found ways to participate in your lives.’ Malargylum began to polymorph themselves, taking on the form of each of the crew of the Drunken Dragon in turn, then ending the display by turning into Ursula, the Mother of Bears, most recent of those to be called Old White Eyes by her enemies.*

*Still in the form of Ursula, Malargylum explained: ‘I can shape myself into a new life like this, then form that life into a simulacrum. I send them out into the world, to live their lives as they see fit, and to try as best they can to forget that they are a piece of me and instead to just live as you do. The paths they choose are fascinating to me, and I love to hear the stories of their lives when they eventually find their way back here in the twilight of their lives. Once their stories are told, they make a choice: to disappear from this world altogether, or to remain in my fog as long as I live.’*

*Soon after, they arrived before a large set of double doors, seemingly no different to many others they’d passed on the way. Malargylum pushed the oversized doors open together, revealing a vaulted chamber beyond filled with a swirling technicolour mist.*

*‘This is the Fog of Memories, the stories of the lives my children lived.’*

*Malargylum began to pull and manipulate the multi-coloured fog as they had the fog outside, bending and shaping it into the form of an elegant, well-dressed Rumidian man in his late middle-age. It appeared as a perfect replica of a human, but there was clearly no life in the eyes. Though it stood, it could have been a corpse. But Malargylum placed their hands on either side of the face and breathed life into it, instantly turning the thing into a moving, breathing man in truth. The Rumidian sketched a bow to the group.*

*‘This is Noble. He lived a life of courtly intrigue, and came to be called Old White Eyes by all manner of political rivals. Alongside Ursula and myself, he is the other actor in the story of your necklace, Wilfred.*

*‘Ursula lives the life of an ice pirate, a jarl in the frozen lands. This gives her a great deal more interaction with myself and my children than most of the lives I send out into the world - for the jarls pay tribute to the Dawnfrost in the hopes of one day joining the immortal crew of the Blue Force.’ Malargylum smiled almost childishly at talking about their great deception. ‘I’d learned some little of the sentiment among Rumidian mages after a child lived in the Sultanates during the warring years - he did not wish to live on in the fog. But Ursula learned a great deal more, with her many raids in Rumidian lands. Interesting patterns started appearing, and Noble and I would talk them over frequently. Noble was first to speculate the truth of the matter in full: there were a significant number of mages in Rumidia that wished to flee, but were hindered by their numbers and the tenacity with which that empire hunts down its runaway magicians.’*

*‘And so, I gambled. I called Ursula back to these halls, cutting her life short. She told me her story early, so that I might place her back into the life she had earned for herself once we were done. But I needed to call her back, for the children formed of this fog cannot stray far from these halls or my ship. I can only have one true simulacrum at a time, and I needed to send Noble to Rumidia.’*

*Malargylum looked to the old Rumidian now and he picked up the story. ‘For years, I probed and questioned as deftly as I could. Eventually I made contact with the secretive mages that wished to take flight. We began to devise a plan between ourselves, and I served as the go-between to connect them in Rumidia with the Dawnfrost here.’*

*Malargylum continued. ‘When the plan was set, I gave Noble 6 of my scales, within each of which I had placed a spell to shift between realms.’*

*‘The plan was simple in its aims, if not in its execution,’ Noble said. ‘Rumidia hunts runaway mages for a minimum of a century, so the group needed to be away for that time.’*

*‘They would travel to the Astral Sea,’ Malargylum said. ‘The Space Without Time, where they’d need not eat or drink or age. And there they’d wait, until one hundred years had passed. After that time, I would have them retrieved and bring them back here, safe from the prying eyes of their empire, and presumed dead to the world. Then I hoped to test them, to see if any could maintain the seal. I doubted that mages of your kind would be strong enough, even if they worked in tandem. But I thought, hoped, that perhaps one might be willing and capable of Ascension, perhaps with my guidance. Then maybe, I would find my successor and the mages would be free to live their lives.*

*‘As I said, it was a gamble. And a great, uncertain one. But better that than I do nothing until the day the phage claims me and the leviathan is loosened on the world once more. But now you appear before me, and one of my scales from then is unspent around your neck. Something has gone wrong with the plan - a possibility we had not considered.*

*‘You have heard my story. Now I would hear yours.’*

* Back in the dining hall, with more food having been prepared by another of Malargylum's previous lives, a halfling woman named Cook, Wilfred asks for more details on what they mean by Ascension. The dragon explains that it is the means by which one of the party's kind go beyond the limits of the mortal. Though they've never known anyone personally who achieved it, they've heard of it being done. The Rumidian saints, for example, were any of them real, would likely have been Ascended individuals. It is, essentially, the means by which a mortal humanoid becomes a demi-god.
* Malargylum asks the group to tell the story of their lives - not least because they don't get much company and such stories fascinate them, but also because they must now decide if it is safe to let the party leave with the knowledge of what they've learned. Malargylum is entirely forthright with their intention to either keep the party and their crew in the castle forever more or even to kill them if they deem it necessary.
	+ With that said, Wilfred goes first. He talks about his childhood and the disappearance of his parents when he was six years' old, how he was raised by the archmage Lyra - who stepped down from her position to do so - and how he spent most of his youth in libraries. He never found answers to his questions regarding the disappearance of his parents in the Rumidian Empire, so when the opportunity presented itself, he left. He quickly found himself swept up in pirate shenanigans after nearly drowning and, not being particularly used to combat at the time, struggled for a long while, even after he met Pyt through Eight-Finger Driscoll's scheming.
	+ Pyt takes up his queue, talking briefly about attending Overplynn University, not liking the studying very much and so leaving. He touches briefly on a few things here and there, but mostly just rushes to the point where he was woken up by some dwarves and ended up in Driscoll's company, thrust onto a new crew with Wilfred and several others - all gone now, in one way or another.
	+ Together they talk about Driscoll's gambit and what led them to meeting Clwyd on the island of Bisquay.
	+ Clwyd talks about her childhood aboard a goblin junker called the Maelstrom. She got seasick easily, so spent her life in the bowels of the ship, apprenticing to her uncle, the ship's engineer. Hers was a contented, modest life until Madog showed up, killing all her ship's crew save for her, hidden below deck, cannibalising the ship for parts, and then sailing away. Clwyd limped her way to Bisquay, an island full of trade and news, where she learned everything she could about Madog and about magical engineering - artifice - to try and arm herself for her revenge quest. There, she met Wilfred and Pyt, and the others that were with them at the time.
	+ The trio go over all their adventures on Hideno Island, Tortuga, and their flight to Hell, then their days with Quinn aboard *the Fortunate Fool*, their fights on the swamp island where they found the panacea plants and where Malak died to save Clwyd, their winter in Bisquay, and eventually their meeting with Aerendyl in the spring.
	+ Aerendyl explains his early life for the first time. He was born in Faerie's 'Autumn City,' a migrating city built amidst a living forest that creeps its way around the autumn region of the wild plane - new trees growing at one end and old trees rotting at the other. Aerendyl was born just seconds after the death of the Autumn City's king, which was seen as a significant portent not only because of Eladrin beliefs regarding reincarnation, but because he was the first birth in a very long time. When he was old enough to start getting visions of his past lives in his trances, they boded ill and nobody could make sense of them. Then, to seal his fate in many ways, the day of his coming of age ceremony arrived, his 100th birthday. While out in procession before much of the city, Aerendyl suddenly cried out and fell to the ground convulsing. He spent the next several centuries an invalid, being nursed in a small room. His parents left the city hoping to find a cure for him only to be brought back dead. In these grim days, his traces became nightmares, and his only joy was an amaranth plant in the room that he watched. Eventually, the River King appeared before Aerendyl as a ghostly apparition, apparently far weaker than he is these days. He offered Aerendyl help, should he wish to make a deal, and Aerendyl found he could stand. Having been told to 'look first for himself,' Aerendyl rushed to a fountain and saw his reflection grinning back at him. It told him to dive into the water, and his life was never the same again. He met Rangrim and learned much of the nature of primal magics, and together with Luciana they hunted monsters for the River King. Eventually, Aerendyl learned that he was to strike out on his own, to serve in the same capacity as Rangrim for another group, a group he'd seen on Tortuga recently. And with the threat of vampires heading to Bisquay (which Rangrim had found out about), Aerendyl went there to meet the party.
	+ All together, the talk through the rest: the fight with Cana in Bisquay, accepting Nix's deal and spending a year in the Hells, returning to a world where Driscoll's war was over, going to Agnor in search of answers, heading to the Pirate Republic and killing the witches there at the behest of the Siblings, hearing the answers they'd earned, going to Dunvegan Keep to thwart a rival devil cult and starting a massive civil revolt in the process, and then finally travelling into the ice and eventually arriving here.
* Malargylum listens intently through the whole story, at no point speaking up or interrupting in any way.
	+ When the party are finished, Malargylum turns to Wilfred and asks him why he thinks his parents are dead. The gnome replies that as the Siblings had said, wouldn't his parents have found him by now if they weren't. The dragon is not so sure, and they apologise for giving him hope where perhaps there truly isn't any, but that there are a great many things that could keep them from returning, especially if they did succeed in plane shifting to the Astral Sea, as was the plan.
	+ Malargylum says that Wilfred's blood holds the key to knowing. They tell Wilfred and the party of an item known as a lineage log pin, a log pin formed with a person's blood, which points the way to their kin. If Wilfred makes one with his blood and the needle moves with purpose, then his parents live yet - though it wouldn't work across planes so he'd do well to go to the Astral once he has it, if only briefly, to see if they live there.
	+ The dragon knows of only one person that can make lineage log pins in this age: the inheritor of the Calendar Fleet, the Sultan of Spice and the Seventh Sultan, Pirate Lord Ibn Qahbe.
	+ And should Malargylum decide to let the group leave, one of their children knows something of Ibn Qahbe that they could share with the group.
* And then to the heart of the matter: Malargylum asks the group how they can trust them, despite their selfish tendencies, despite the fact that they serve so many wicked masters, the Hells and an archfey at the same time.
	+ Wilfred says that in the face of everything else they have shown real loyalty to each other. He believes that he and the group at large are not without redemption, and that they work towards noble goals.
	+ Clwyd says that if she wanted to end the world, as the knowledge they now carried threatens to do, she wouldn't have chased one man halfway around it hoping to make things better for her people.
	+ Pyt says that in nothing else, Wilfred wants to meet his parents again, and coming back here is the only way he'd manage that.
	+ Poppy says that she thinks they're good people, even as they try to convince themselves sometimes that maybe they aren't, that maybe they have have hearts of stone. They look after each other and they don't like seeing wrongs being done - their methods are just a bit extreme at times. Garret says they gave him another shot at life and it's been pretty exciting so far. Taylor mumbles that they saved his life too.
	+ Aerendyl says that Wilfred is perhaps the best friend he's ever had, and that he wouldn't jeopardise the gnome's chance to see things through to the end if he can help it. But to that end, the elf worries that as a group they face things that can read minds or compel answers with some regularity.
	+ The ageless, genderless human face pondered their answers for a long time. Eventually they looked to Pyt and asked him to weave a suggestion spell on all of them, a spell that would compel someone to look elsewhere should they peer into any of their minds and look upon what was discussed between them this day. Then, with an icy breath that filled the air with diamond dust, Malargylum took hold of Pyt's spell and turned it inside out, inverting it as it settled on top of the minds of each of them (including Poop, who was busy with his key and didn't understand any of the Common being spoken anyway).
	+ The dragon acquiesces, saying it was their pride to have not foreseen a problem in the plan with the mages, and their selfishness that had them bring the party here to reveal all to them. If nothing else, the group care for each other, and that alone should be enough reason for them to not wish ruin on the world.
	+ By this time it is very late. The group spend the night in one of the former dragon chambers, now a hollow shell that was once a great beast's home.
* The next day, Crawlfrost 8, the party prepare to leave, with the same crew of former Old White Eyes lives getting *the Blue Force* ready.
	+ A former life of Malargylum's known as Priest is not making the journey with them, but having lived in the Six Sultanates, came to know a bit about Pirate Lord Ibn Qahbe:
		- It's a title passed on from master to successor.
		- They are the ruler of Spice Town, an independent city-state between the Rumidian Southern Margraviate and the Six Sultanates - and one of the only 'safe' spots of anchorage in those open waters.
		- The original Ibn Qahbe, Khan Ibn Qahbe, founded and commanded the Calendar Fleet - a set of 392 ships, one for each day of the Sultanate's Akandan calendar. This fleet rests at Spice Town now, ready to be called whenever Ibn Qahbe needs it.
		- The 'spice' they are known for are a great number of drugs that they manufacture and flood both the great empires of the world with.
		- They possess a number of incredibly powerful magic items that make them very formidable in combat.
		- And the reason Priest knows they can make lineage log pins is a grim one: the Ibn Qahbe he knew of used it on someone that had earned his ire. Ibn Qahbe captured his enemy, but didn't kill him straight away. He made a lineage log pin from the man's blood and used it to track down all his nearest kin, killing them first, and all in front of the captured man. Only when the needle stopping spinning, when the blood grew too thin for the log pin to point the way, did Ibn Qahbe finally kill his enemy.
	+ The party ask Malargylum if they'd help with any information regarding the witches of the tundra that the party needed to hunt before they could go to Ibn Qahbe. The dragon was still reluctant to get so involved in the affairs of their kind, but since they'd already done so, ultimately relented. The coven of five are not as one, they said. Two in the forest war with two in the mountains, and the fifth on the island is the prisoner of both groups. If they travel first to the island, the party might be able to find an ally in their goal.
* The Blue Force eventually sets sail and it's three more days of rapid sailing before the party are dropped off back at the totem post in the ice field near the Blue Lake Hold on the island of Hyrrvelheim. Aerendyl casts Wind Walk and they travel back to the outskirts Black Salt Springs, arriving in the afternoon of Crawlfrost 11.
* Before they go into the hold itself, Poop excitedly presents Wilfred with his little bronze key, now filled with tiny, intricate engravings. Poop says it's for Wilfred and is then incredulous when the gnome takes it, says thanks, and makes to put it away. There's some confusion as the brownie demands he go and use it, obviously, on 'Deedee'. Eventually, they figure out that Poop wants Wilfred to use the key on the door of the Drunken Dragon's deck cabin. When the gnome does so, there's a significant click as the key turns. Poop happily takes the key back, wearing it strapped to his back like a greatsword now. Then they open the door and reveal that the deck cabin is far bigger on the inside than the outside now, filled with delicately carved hard wood, furniture, and even a bit of stonework for a fireplace and a galley. As they all start thanking the brownie, he's chuffed to bits, smiling and vibrating with excitement, telling them to praise him more.