Seeking Runeforge, Part III (Tuesday-Wednesday, Calistril (II) 4th-5th, 4708 AR)

The heroes returned to Rimeskull to face off against Arkrhyst again. When Arkrhyst was severely injured, he escaped from the heroes.

Xin's Stairway

A massive stairway that looked like it must have been built by giants and taken years, if not decades, to complete was chiseled out of the side of the mountain. A twenty-foot-wide and thirty-foot-tall stone arch framed the first steps, while the final steps led directly up to a carving of an ancient face, its open mouth a cave entrance. The familiar seven-pointed star was etched deeply into its surface, prominently positioned at the highest section of the arch. Bones lay in iced-over heaps along the visible areas of the stairway.

Each step was approximately a foot and a half high and 3 feet deep, with an average width of 20 feet. The stairway wound back and forth, rising up 200 feet to the entrance to the cavern above. Icy bones littered the long stairway. For the most part, the skeletal debris was frozen to the steps, the bones and random equipment brittle from ages of frost and chill wind.

The landing was approximately 60 feet wide and 50 feet long from the top of the steps to the cave mouth. The strong winds blowing across the mountain at these heights imposed a penalty on ranged attacks and the senses. The surface of the landing was coated in places by a thin layer of rime, but this did not affect movement.

Beyond the stairway was a small cavern that served as the dragon's lair. A pair of guardians watched over the stairs leading up to the cave entrance. When the heroes climbed these stairs they immediately attracted their attention. These guardians were two elder earth elementals. The elementals attacked on sight intruders on the stairs.

Each elemental knocked opponents back from the cave mouth. The earth elementals fought to the death.

Deadly Slide. Two twelve-foot tall statues flanked the large tunnel. Each held a hand upraised as if to ward away intruders, and clutched a heavy sword with the other.

The statue on the west side of the tunnel marked the start of an invisible ledge that could be used to safely bypass the dangerous slope and descend into the cavern beyond. Although the ledge was invisible, bits of dust and snow and rubble on its length made it easier to notice. The slope itself was icy. There was a billowing mass of misty vapors in the tunnel at this point.

The Ice Falls. The slope ended at the edge of a gaping chasm of darkness. Huge icicles hung from the ceiling and coils of mist rose up from below. The gulf itself was 300 feet deep, eventually opening into a frozen cathedral.

Frozen Cathedral. The walls of this cavern glittered and sparkled with sheets of ice. Seven twenty-foot-tall pillars, their sides encrusted with ice and engraved with ancient glyphs and runes, surrounded an eighth pillar twice the size. Tunnels exited the central cavern, winding deeper into the mountain. Yet perhaps the most notable feature was the sparkling mound of coins, works of art, gemstones, jewelry, weapons, armor, and other things poking up form the pile that occupied the northwestern section of the cavern.

The chamber had served as Arkrhyst's lair. The seven pillars surrounding the central pillar were each marked with hundreds of Thassilonian runes - arcane formulae describing the basic tenets of one of the seven Thassilonian schools of magic. The seven pillars formed the points of a huge Sihedron, and the heroes revealed a small keyhole hidden four feet off the ground on each pillar, facing the central monolith.

Dragon Hoard. This massive pile of treasure consisted of 39,500 cp, 9,410 sp, 3,500 gp, and 250 pp. Mixed in with the coins were tapestries, small items of furniture made of precious woods, delicate pieces of jewelry and fine works of art, silverware and candelabras, six everburning torches, and several decorative boxes spilling pieces of jewelry worth an additional 16,000 gp in all. Buried in the coins was a quiver of 14 masterwork arrows and two greater dragon slaying arrows, a belt of giant strength +4, a teak box holding a felt cushion with six round depressions each containing a thunderstone, an ivory set of lesser bracers of archery, a +3 darkwood buckler carved with the symbol of Kyonin on its face, a chime of opening (5 charges), a cloak of resistance +3, a flametongue, a masterwork suit of full plate decorated with onyx ravens perched on the shoulders (each raven was worth 200 gp), a suit of +3 half-plate with a wolf motif, 6 vials of frozen holy water, a pearl of power (1st-level spell), 17 potions of cure light wounds, 6 potions of cure moderate wounds, 3 potions of cure serious wounds, 2 potions of resist energy 20 (cold), two Small +1 mithral shirts, a scroll of globe of invulnerability, a scroll of heal, a scroll of remove blindness/deafness, a wand of bear's endurance (38 charges), a wand of cure light wounds (46 charges), a wand of magic missile (CL 5th, 8 charges), and a +1 adamantine warhammer.