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Paul DMing; Scott: Smudge (shadar-kai rogue 9 / barbarian 2) and Martin (duergar cleric 11); Dane: Tudo Fleck (dwarf cleric 11); Rob: Vox (half-elf bard 11).
Last time, the adventurers killed the crew of a ssnakeman catamaran, and settled in for a six-day sea voyage.
Smudge sets up hammocks for everyone to rest, while the out-of-control ship advances into increasingly icy waters.
On the third day, they spot a outrigger canoe full of Porpoise people. Hoping to hand over the porpoise person who had been half-transformed into a snake (i.e., the "ssnorpoise") , Smudge waves to the canoe, but it's too far away and moving too slowly to catch up with the catamaran.
The party spends a day trying to learn how to control the vessel. They manage to control the balast of the hulls and operate the running and signal lights, then give up.
The ssnorpoise tells them that his people call the type giant harnessed sea creature pulling the catamaran "flipper munchers".
To pass the time and help the starving ssnorpoise ("Porpoise people don't eat mammals, man!"), Tudo tries longline fishing. After a few hours, the line goes taught with something big and heavy enough to slightly slow down the catamaran — a space capsule. They haul the spacecraft into the catamaran's hold, and open it to discover two space-suited skeletons. One of the skeletons stands, its skull glowing inside its space helmet!
Vox _dispels evil_ and dismisses both the undead space kook and the space capsule to shadowfell.
After a final day on the water, they spot the northern ice pack. Tudo, Vox, Martin, Smudge, and the ssnorpoise pile into the dingy. They cut loose from the catamaran when they're a minute away from the ice.
The catamaran wrecks in a screeching, frosty shower of debris, and the flipper muncher eventually tears free of its harness and rockets silently into the deep.
The ice pack stretches for miles. It's nearly featureless, except for thousands of ice gnomes laboring near the water. Their pointy white-blue hats mirror thousands of conical ice formations sprouting from the frozen ground.
As the dingy lands, the party witnesses four gnomes shattering a fifth gnome and throwing the broken ice chunks into the sea. The ssnorpoise explains that the ice gnomes reproduce by casting their pieces into the sea. "We hunt and eat 'em but always throw a couple limbs into the ocean. Sustainability matters, man!" They leave the porpoise person near the coast, testing his new improvised skis and stalking ice gnomes with a warhammer borrowed from Martin.
They talk to an ice gnome named Gnancy. She confirms that ice gnomes shatter each other to grow more gnomes. She also evangelizes about the supremacy of The Void and the tyranny of The Gaze. "Go talk to Master Unshattered in the church! He's a true prophet of The Void!"
The party spots two large white buildings standing a mile or two from the coast, the only visible structures on the snowy expanse.
A line of ice gnomes wait outside the building to the west, one of whom tells the party that this building is the church of The Communion of Absolute Zero.
Vox goes invisible and enters the Communion of Absolute Zero. Inside is a big room with an ice gnome priest priest, two sleepy guards carrying snow shovels and ice picks, and two other ice gnomes standing by a big mechanical wheel attached to a mechanism with large tubes or tunnels. A rack hold propaganda pamphlets and a few posters decorate the walls.
The priest, Master Unshattered, leads a gnome from the outside line into a large box/chamber connected to the tubes and offers a few words of spiritual guidance before locking other gnome inside the box, behind a stout door. Everyone hears (and feels, deep in their chests) a THUMP-THUMP as the two worker gnomes spin the big mechanical wheel. Master Unshattered opens the door to the chamber, which is now empty.
