Blood Beneath the Ice

Out of the Library

During Days 15–21, after reaching the clerical halls of the Library of All Knowledge, Karl spent what felt like days studying the forms of protection against evil. An agent of the Order eventually guided the party by a concealed and circuitous road back to the dwarven tunnels and the frozen surface.

The calendar no longer agreed with their memory. Whatever had happened inside the Library, the next dependable date was Day 22.

North of the tunnels, faint smoke marked a barbarian camp. Asuran crept close, packed half his remaining black powder into a pouch and cast it beside the fire. The confined blast killed five barbarians, scattered their stores and uncovered a shaft descending some thirty-four feet into the earth.

Tracks told the rest of the approach: roughly twelve human travellers carrying barrel-heavy loads, together with the prints of a large dragon-ogre that appeared to have remained above. With a severe blizzard drawing nearer, the party fixed a rope to a frozen tree and descended.

The Sleeper and the Blood

The cavern below held a rough fire, sacks and barrels. One contained beer, another water. Two sealed vessels smelled strongly of blood but made no sound when moved; their contents had frozen solid.

In an alcove slept an enormous stitched creature—a living flesh golem sustained by alchemy and blood rather than ordinary magic. It had likely excavated the shaft and carried the barbarians’ loads. The party moved quietly, placing barrels as an obstacle rather than waking it.

A strongbox was bound with a cleverly worked continuous chain. Once its difficult lock was defeated, the adamantine chain was removed without disturbing the sleeper.

The drier passage ended at an ancient wooden door. A barbarian corpse lay before it, killed only hours earlier by a lightning glyph. The old ward should have been powerless, yet blood sacrifice had stirred it back to life. With the charge spent, the party pushed into the sanctuary beyond.

The Guardian of Brass

Chanting echoed through the chamber. Asuran advanced unseen and found a brass sentry armed with a long spear, a barbarian wearing purple priestly robes and a bronze gong beneath the gaze of a two-headed lizard idol.

His crossbow bolt struck the kneeling barbarian, but the basilisk venom on its point failed to petrify him. The pretended priest attempted to talk his way free, then fled when the deception collapsed.

The guardian obeyed its ancient order. Blood seeped from its metal joints as Karl and Halen battered through its resistance to edged weapons and destroyed it. The fleeing barbarian was brought down before he could escape the cavern.

Beyond the gong stood a staircase the barbarians refused to touch. Halen stepped onto the old stone and saw a sudden vision of himself ushering souls onward into the afterlife. Five more barbarians gathered below, unwilling to cross the supernatural threshold. Their refusal did not prevent the battle that followed.

The Hall of Champions

Beyond the fighting chamber lay a long hall whose walls held the remains of Laogzed’s ancient champions. Each lizardfolk warrior rested upright within a green suspended state. Some had deteriorated or lacked complete limbs, yet healing and arcane examination found that none had crossed fully into death.

The snake-priest occupied the central place among them. He had brought himself to the final edge of life and mounted himself upon the wall, allowing the suspension to preserve him with his strength spent and his blood almost gone. He was neither alive in any ordinary sense nor undead: he waited.

The purpose of the hall was reserve rather than burial. In an age when Laogzed’s settlements were threatened—or when something vast needed to be consumed—the champions could awaken and answer. With magic absent and the god’s avatars disconnected, they had instead remained dormant for well over a hundred years and were slowly fading.

Hooks, benches and traces of old meals marked an adjoining antechamber where followers had eaten, drunk and cast off worldly possessions before entering. Deeper within the complex stood a dormant portal to the Negative Energy Plane, a road no living traveller should willingly take.

The Avatar of Laogzed

The remaining barbarians fought hard within the lower sanctuary. Their spilled blood reached mechanisms older than the intruders and awakened the temple’s true inhabitant: a vast two-headed avatar of Laogzed.

Halen completed the sacrifice with the flesh of a fallen enemy. The avatar answered. Laogzed had entered hibernation one hundred and forty-two years earlier after an immense feeding, while fading divine power severed distant avatars from their source. The creature urged mortals to call through the avatars that remained instead of shouting blindly towards silent gods.

The frozen barrels contained two blood elementals, one living and one already dead. Essence was drawn from the dead creature and provisionally valued at seventy-three thousand gold pieces. The living elemental was returned through a portal to the Negative Energy Plane after sacrifice restored enough power to open the way.

For his part in the rite, Halen gained the Mark of Laogzed, which appeared alongside the other mark he already carried.

The sanctuary yielded an adamantine locking chain, the guardian’s masterwork brass longspear, a cloak fashioned from mammoth ear that hardened its wearer against blows and mundane cold, and the extracted blood-elemental essence. The sleeping flesh golem, the approaching blizzard and the dragon-ogre outside remained unresolved.

Within the Red Gem

Karl formed a prayer circle to Thardar and drew the party into the red gem. Its inner world revealed thirteen remaining charges and a capacity valued at roughly four thousand gold pieces.

The gem’s known dwarven-door sense consumed half that reserve when invoked. Karl attuned the relic to himself, but its hoped-for divine or healing purpose remained unfinished.

Day 22 ended with more knowledge than certainty: an old god could still speak through blood, a living elemental had been freed, and the party’s most important relic had finally accepted a bearer.