Where the Ice Is Born

The morning after Laogzed’s awakening, the party discovered that the cold beneath the northern wastes was not merely winter. Water was being forced upward and frozen from below—and something new had begun to live inside the ice.

Party: Asuran · Halen · Karl · Toby
Location: Frozen caverns beneath Laogzed’s temple
Encounters: Lingering divine hunger · Extreme cold · Newborn Ice Elemental

Asuran in his black hat and blue cloak and another companion eat ravenously beside the morning fire while the rest of the party confront them — The hunger of Laogzed followed the party into their dreams and waited beside the morning fire.

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✧ Encounters & Discoveries

01After LaogzedDreams of feasting leave two companions ravenous until they master the compulsion. 02Glacially Pure WaterThe sixth barrel holds water clean enough to improve serious alchemical work. 03The Newborn ElementalAn ice elemental forms where planar cold is spilling into the world. 04Craft and PreparationThe blizzard gives the party a day for alchemy, weapon work, bow-making and shield work. 05Journey into the Red GemThe party reshapes the attuned gem at a punishing physical cost.

After the feast

The Hunger Laogzed Left Behind

The night after the temple did not pass cleanly. Two companions dreamed of endless eating, drinking and feasting. By morning they were ravenous, cooking and devouring the expedition’s stores with an urgency far beyond ordinary hunger.

The others challenged them before too much food disappeared. Both found a moment of clarity and forced the compulsion down. It passed, but the cause was unmistakable: Laogzed’s appetite had followed the party beyond the shrine.

With the influence suppressed, attention returned to the caverns. The lower passages were colder than the surface and colder than any natural cave ought to be. Halen’s resistance and the mammoth-ear cloak offered protection, but the others could remain below only briefly before retreating to the fire.

Too clean

The Sixth Barrel

The final sealed barrel was opened with care. Inside was fresh water, but it was almost unnaturally clean. Even the clearest mountain stream carries minerals, sediment and traces of life. This water appeared to contain almost none of them.

Asuran in his black hat and blue cloak examines perfectly clear water with Halen, Karl and Toby in the frozen storeroom — The sixth barrel contained water of extraordinary glacial purity, untouched by sediment or decay.

It had not been conjured, nor was it the primordial water previously taken from the Plane of Water. It was natural glacial water of exceptional purity—valuable wherever contaminated liquid might spoil an alchemical, herbal or ritual preparation. Once the seal was broken, however, that purity would not last indefinitely.

The cavern supplied a darker answer to where the water had come from. The passages sloped downward and should have drained naturally, yet the water was rising from below. Ice smashed away the previous day had almost closed again overnight. Somewhere deeper in the earth, cold was forcing water back towards the surface and freezing it in place.

A shape in the wall

The Ice Elemental

The party descended roughly fifteen feet into a lower cavern where pools of bitter water lay between thick walls of ice. Toby noticed that one wall was not like the others. A large, vaguely humanoid shape had formed inside it.

It was an ice para-elemental, a being from the boundary between elemental water and elemental ice. Such creatures were not born on the Prime Material Plane. Stranger still, this one was newborn—already large and powerful, yet wholly new to the world.

Asuran edged past the frozen form and stepped into a focused blast of supernatural cold. Frost seized his hair and clothing before he tumbled clear. The elemental then cracked free from the wall, scattering shards across the passage as it turned towards the party.

A newborn ice elemental breaks from a frozen cavern wall as a freezing blast strikes Asuran, wearing his black hat and blue cloak — The newborn elemental cracked free of the wall after its freezing breath caught Asuran in the passage.

The companions withdrew together. The creature followed through the ice as though the frozen barriers were no more substantial than mist, but stopped near the warmer refuge. Heat made it recoil and fragments fell from its body. Toby recognised the movement of those fragments as an attempt to communicate. The elemental had only just come into existence, and the party may have been the first living beings it had ever encountered.

It eventually wandered back into the frozen chambers. Dangerous simply by existing, it had shown curiosity rather than malice. Its birth was the clearest evidence yet that the deepening winter was not merely weather: the boundary between worlds was beginning to fail.

Work before sleep

Making Use of the Day

By mid-morning the party had explored every passage they could reach without entering the freezing pools. Outside, the blizzard was weakening, but it would not clear until late in the day. They chose to remain under cover, recover their strength and leave on the following morning.

Asuran in his black hat prepares alchemical draughts while Halen shapes a darkwood sword, Karl works on his falcon shield and Toby crafts a bow — With the blizzard still raging, Asuran, Halen, Karl and Toby turned the sheltered hours to alchemy, weapon-making and repairs.

Asuran set up the alchemist’s kit and used the glacially pure water to prepare six doses of a speed-and-agility draught. The mixture would sharpen movement, reflexes and ranged aim for the length of a battle.

Halen spent the day shaping his large darkwood blank towards a two-handed sword. The weapon remained unfinished and far too valuable to risk as a makeshift club, so his warhammer remained ready for anything that returned from the ice. Karl added another day’s careful work to his shield, while Toby advanced his bow-making by a day and a half.

As night approached, they prepared to enter the red gem. Such journeys into the inner worlds of the divine stones were exhausting and therefore best attempted immediately before sleep.

Within the stone

The Red Gem Reshaped

Karl led the party into the red gem once more. Because the stone was already attuned to him, crossing its threshold came more easily than before, but changing what lay within remained dangerous. Their first task was to gather the gem’s scattered power and turn its nature fully towards clerical use.

The inner struggle steadily drove companions from the shared vision. Toby was forced out early, and only Karl and Halen remained for the decisive effort. When the gem resisted, Karl chose to bear the backlash himself rather than allow the stone to lose charges. The change succeeded: the red gem was reshaped into a clerical gem.

They pressed on and configured it to hold clerical spells. The final exertion overwhelmed Karl, leaving him unconscious and exhausted for the night, but the gem remained unharmed. Further refinement—such as directing it towards particular healing magic—would have to wait.

That ended Day 23. The party did not leave the caverns that evening. They remained beneath Laogzed’s temple, keeping Karl warm and resting while the last of the blizzard passed overhead. Their departure north belongs to the beginning of Day 24.