Reports from before the Flood tell us that ensouled artifacts grow in power alongside their creators. With this magical growth, come physical growth as the item becomes more magnificent in the eyes of its creator.

-Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts

—

Everyone donned their coats and cloaks—except for Rakin who instead began to take off the thick woolen clothes he’d been wearing, returning to his normal loose-fitting robe.

“What are you doing?” Doug asked.

“I, uh…,” Rakin stumbled, looking from Zale to Kole. “I don’t need those things...”

“Oh, okay,” Doug said as if that was a sufficient explanation.

Rakin relaxed but looked a little surprised at the ease Doug dropped the issue.

Zale walked up to the door, and everyone pulled their hoods tight as she braced for the cold.

She pushed the door open and jumped through—into a warmly lit tavern. The wooden building has a few sparsely populated tables with a mix of human and halfling guests with a counter in the back.

“Welcome travelers!” a voice called from behind a bar within. “Close the door quick, you’re letting in all the snow!”

Zale walked in and turned around to face the group, her mouth dropping in surprise. Kole ran through next and turned to see what had happened. The door he’d stepped through opened up to a snow-filled village square. The ground was covered in snow where it wasn't hard-packed into rough ice. A wall of white surrounded their view, the red sun setting just above it. The Dahn was gone.

Doug and Rakin stepped out next, appearing as if out of nowhere.

“The door!” the innkeeper shouted again

Kole too gaped in awe, more at the sight of snow than the magical disappearing door—that was almost trivial to him at this point. He hadn't even seen rain yet since his time on the surface and hadn't even hoped to get to see snow. Living under a dome specifically designed to keep out water, the idea of water falling from the sky had a special place in his childhood nightmares.

The climate of Basin was very warm, with its location on the equator and of course, the giant Fire Primordial-turned-corrupted murder machine trapped in the center. Things had cooled slightly when the prison runes had been upgraded during the Last Dragon War, but it still only snowed on the mountains west of the elven lands, and few non-elves were lucky enough to see that.

Doug and Rakin both looked on in awe at the white vista.

"Close the Faust damned door!" the innkeeper shouted, much less welcoming now.

Zale quickly closed the door, not as enraptured as the boys

"It’s beautiful," Doug whispered.

"Aye," Rakin agreed soberly, despite himself.

Even the grumpy arctic-circle-hating dwarf could appreciate the beauty of the place.

"You should see the snow on the mountains," Zale said. "Mom took me there a few times. The views are great, the people, not so much. Let's get to work. Everyone, eyes open."

That snapped everyone out of their reverence, and they dropped their heavy bags.

"Sorry about the door," Zale said, approaching the bar. "We just got into town. We're an adventuring party. We heard there might be work here."

The innkeeper chuckled but then stopped, confused when he noticed Zale's own confusion at his laughter.

"Oh, you're serious?"

Zale nodded.

"The whiteout starts tonight. Everyones going to be stuck in their homes for the next month. It's going to be as boring as a monastery."

The four huddled in the corner of the inn, garnering stares from the few patrons.

"What do we do?" Doug asked.

"Let's scout out the perimeter," Zale suggested "Something has to be going on. They wouldn’t send us here to do nothing."

The group left the inn, and and began to canvas the town.

"It’s freezing!" Kole whined after only a few minutes.

He kept looking over at Rakin, amazed that the dwarf was completely unconcerned with the cold.

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"It’s not as bad as I expected," Zale said, pulling her scarf down and inhaling the crisp air.

The village was small, with maybe enough homes for a few hundred people. A wall of compacted ice surrounded the place and there were nearly as many glass greenhouses as there were houses. The few people outside were busy performing last-minute preparations for the coming storm. Despite the impending "whiteout," no one much seemed concerned.

There were no monster tracks outside the walls, there weren't even guards. When asked why they had an unguarded wall, an old man laughed and told them that even the monsters hide during the whiteout.

So, eventually, when the snow began to fall and visibility began to drop, the party returned to the inn, cold and confused.

"Welcome—Oh, you're back," the innkeeper greeted, not exactly happy to see the odd group.

"We would like some rooms," Zale said, false cheer in her voice. "And sorry about before."

Doug was last to enter and he slammed the door shut behind him. Zale haggled for the room, and Kole couldn't tell if the prices were exorbitant because they’d been a bit rude, or because the innkeeper really had them over a barrel with the whole blizzard thing. In the end, they paid three copper a night, but they had to turn over all their provisions toward the inn’s white-out stores.

“Does anyone actually have money?” Kole whispered outside the innkeeper’s earshot.

Zale fished a sack of coins out from inside her cloak.

“Unspent credits turn into coins inside,” she said, hefting the rather full pouch.

They’d selected a lot of mundane provisions for the trip, but without the blasting rod, they’d had plenty left over. By then, they were starving and dug into the mystery stew that the innkeeper provided them and made a plan for the night.

After they’d eaten, they all headed upstairs to the singular room they’d rented. Kole and Doug had tried to insist Zale get her own room, but she shot them down.

“Never split up when you suspect danger,” she explained. “And besides, we couldn’t afford it.”

She did relent to taking the bed, however, and the boys all set up their sleeping rolls on the floor.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Kole volunteered.

Per their discussion, they’d keep watch all night, and start to interview people in the inn the next day for any hint at what was going on.

***

The night passed without incident, and the next morning came and went without any leads. The party had tried starting conversations with the other patrons, but all inquiries into interesting comings and goings were met with blank stares. Interesting things, it seemed, neither came nor went on the arctic circle.

“So what do we actually know about this place?” Kole asked his gathered team.

“We know quite a lot,” Rakin said, pointing to himself, Doug, and Zale. “You were distracted all week.”

Kole grew red.

“Yeah…. Sorry about that.”

“There’s not a whole lot,” Zale volunteered. “This ‘whiteout’ thing takes up most of the month of Erebog. It’s something the ice elementals do every year. The towns and cities of the arctic just wait it out, the winds aren’t bad, there’s just zero visibility. The ice primal tribes treat the event as some sort of holiday.”

“So what’s the test?” Kole asked. “Waiting?”

Three days later, it did in fact seem like waiting was the test. They’d continued to rotate watches, but nothing happened besides the visibility outside dropping to zero as the whiteout started in force. On the third morning, however, they woke to new arrivals in the inn.

When asked, they revealed they were locals, and that they’d entered the inn through the tunnels that connected all the buildings. Once Doug realized he could get to the greenhouses he’d spotted, he quickly disappeared to study the life cultivated on this barren icy landscape.

The ice tunnels opened a new avenue for them to explore for adventure, but that too turned up no leads. Zale was disappointed in them all—herself included—that their previous scouting hadn’t turned up the existence of the passages. That seemed to make Rakin even more unhappy with the situation, as subterranean tunnels were sort of his specialty and his inability to find them here highlighted how out of place he was.

In exploring the tunnels, they found a large open chamber the village’s children and adults used for sport, and they adopted it as their own training area.

“If we are going to be here a while, we might as well make some use of the time,” Zale said and led them in weapons practice.

Out of a desire to maintain a state of readiness, she went easy on the physical conditioning and ”bonks.”

Later that night in their room, Kole dug through his bag for something he could put on his many, many, bruises and he found his new spellbook. He’d forgotten he had brought it with him. In fact, he was fairly sure he hadn't. He typically left it behind when going to classes where he wouldn’t have use for it, but since the discovery of his new spellbook’s magical properties, he’d begun to carry it more often.

Hmm, I guess I did bring it. He thought.

In the time before the Last Dragon War, a wizard wouldn’t go anywhere without his spellbook on his person. Now, with the dissemination of spellforms, the spellbook was less sacrosanct. Now wizards generally kept them at home if going out for the day, unless they expected to need them. Kole hadn’t thought to bring his on this adventure, him only having two spells, both being already prepared in his mind.

“How long do you think we will be here?” Kole asked the room.

The question was met with shrugs.

“The whole month maybe?” Zale answered uncertainly. “Either something is going to happen at the end, or waiting is the test.”

In the days that followed, Kole shifted his mindset. He’d been spending his free time trying to puzzle out what could be the purpose of this mission.

Maybe I need to just treat this like real life, he considered.

If he were an adventurer, he’d have situations like this plenty. Downtime between activities in which he’d need to stay alert to danger, but with no active pressing threat. He considered how best to approach this. Constant readiness was important, and Zale had already incorporated that into her own training methods, keeping them lighter.

How can I apply that same mindset?

The more he considered it, the more he saw similarities to his regular day-to-day life. He already made sure to optimize his Will usage, while striving to stay at a high level of Will to prevent headaches. If he did the same here, only using his Will up entirely at the end of the day, he would constantly be ready for battle.

Sleeping however was risky, if they were attacked at night, but he did have a potion of clarity. He’d avoided using the costly potions to further his studies since leaving Illandrios, but this was the ideal situation for one—plus the one he had would only work in the dungeon so there was no need to save it. If he kept one near him when he slept, he could quickly recover any missing Will should he be woken in the night.

So, with his blasting rod and clarity potion positioned next to him on his bed roll, Kole dove back into his studies.