A letter addressed to Keryn

[jmecha]

*A letter Addresed, Keryn is slipped underneath the door of the Virgin Square Lhuvendhead Trading Company Door*

The Trident capable of creating the Spell Freeze has been returned to the Queen's Spire by the Third Circle, because it was reported stolen. I do not know where it has been planted. I believe it has been returned to a body of water to once more bring about the Spell Freeze. We are actively working to locate it.

Vale Clearwaters of the Adventurer's Guild

[jmecha]

*Another Letter is Addressed to Keryn*

We have reason to believe the Trident is located beneath Black Staff's Tower, within the Flooded Lower Sewers and guarded by Servants of the Furies.

Vale Clearwaters, Adventurer's Guild

[jmecha]

* Vale delivers a letter addressed to Keryn to the Lhuvendhead Trading Company Virgin Square property.*

Keryn,

The Ice Demon that we fought maybe an Ice Devil. Below I have copied the findings of a researcher I have hired to aid with our efforts.

ICE DEVIL

Gelugoth <- Devil <- Fiend <- Outsider

“Ice devils are insectoid creatures of pure ice and evil which hail from the 8th layer of the Nine Hells, which is one away from as bad as it gets,” says a quote attributed by Erpalio to the sage Bowgentle. In “Gentleman Scholar,” Erpalio quotes from one of Bowgentle’s early works, a travelogue entitled “Bad, Worst, Worster, Worstest.” [N.B. the Bowgentle work in question is held in the third sub-basement of the Vault of Sages in Bowgentle’s birth city of Silverymoon. When last viewed (by the author of this tract), the tome was in the Non-Magical but Valuable Heirloom Locker, its binding visibly singed but intact, and a splatter of some ancient brown stain left obscuring what is the earliest known instance of Bowgentle’s signature personal rune. The author of this tract did not have enough seniority to access the key to the VHL without a requisition signed by her superior, Brother Calwern, or the Keeper himself, and apologizes to her current employer for not knowing it would be important in her future and submitting paperwork for such a requisition.]

Ice Devils may stand 12 feet tall and weigh 700 pounds.

Ice Devils speak a wide range of languages of power, including but not limited to: Draconic, Infernal and Celestial. [Auran?] There are reports of mind-to-mind telepathic speech. [Did Aglorus not mention psionic powers? Related?]

Ice Devils have no difficulty seeing any distance without light, and are on record as not needing to “see” at all, being able to find their way in the fashion of the blind: by touch, sound, and a nearly anti-supernal sense of location.

Combat:
The short entry for this section should be, by rights: Do Not Engage!

As this is written for a company of adventurers, a more descriptive entry is required, prefaced with a warning. An Ice Devil is a senior inhabitant of the Hells, touring our plane on some business of its superior. The Hells have a bureaucracy second only to the infrastructure of scholastic organizations, and like middle level librarians with an inflated view of their intelligence and an eye to advancing through the ranks, Ice Devils will rip those beneath them limb from limb with claw and spear.

Melee:
Rather than librarians, these are the strategists and military commanders of the Hells, and physically vicious fighters. Personal accounts speak of jaws that bite, tails that deliver a bludgeoning blow, and the weapon in the form of a magical spear that deals numbing, slowing, cold-based injuries.

Magic
They are also spellcasters of great power. Not surprisingly, their focus is on spells of any circle that have to do with cold. The Lady’s College of the Conclave of Silverymoon trains its elementalists in certain spells that they call variously, “Cone of Cold,” “Ice Storm,” and “Walls of Ice.” There, they teach that these and other meteorological attacks may be countered by means of arcane protections, but some circles hold that it is more sensible to counter arcane magics with the mightier divine. Some circles have experienced some deities granting some divine Protection from Energy of either hot or cold persuasion without needing to call on the fickle Weave.

Their Defenses:
In addition to the damages that they cause, Ice Devils are reputedly immune or resistant to much that the standard opponent -- or victim -- may throw at them. According to accounts gathered from many sources, no fire, cold or poison has any effect on them. Acid causes limited damage. Blows from weapons that would fell another creature seem to injure them much less.

And now the Good News:
But they do bleed. And they do die. At least according to a fragment apparently torn from the journal of a cook of some icy regiment of soldiers, who reported:

“A gelugon named Vreesar led an attempt to conquer Toril from a portal in the Great Glacier. He was stopped by a Harper ranger named Martine and a former paladin named Vilheim.”

[N.B. I find the mention of portals extremely coincidental. Unfortunately, the fragment gives no hint as to how Ser Vilheim managed to defeat Vreesar. I have been unable to find anything further on the noble paladin and his seemingly musical squire, or even the order to which Ser Vilheim belongs, and it may be a dead end.]

Combat Codicile:
What is known about the death of Gelugons, and any Devil, is that should they actually be slain mainly on this plane, they dissolve into a poisonous slime here, but are reconstituted back on their Hellish plane of origin 99 years later in the same form they died in, free to return and wreak vengeance on the descendants of those who slew them.

Potentially Important but Uncorroborated Fragments from Less Authoritative or Unattributed Sources:


“In combat, a gelugon prefers to let its minions engage foes in melee so that it can hang back and appraise the foe’s tactics, strengths, and weaknesses. The ice devil supports its minions with its spells…”

“It is said that each ice devil—known as gelugons among the ranks of devilkind—bears within its chest a stolen, frozen mortal heart, which allows it to make decisions free of all emotion.”

“The first page declares the book's title and contains the holy symbol of Auril—a six-pointed snowflake outlined in white on a gray lozenge. The next thirteen pages describe basic rites, rituals, and services of the church of Auril, most of which, good-aligned individuals would find abhorrent. Here was also found the proper phrases to use when summoning a para-elemental from the Plane of Ice.”

[N.B. The last quote was Erpalio again. The book thus described by that great sage was not named nor attributed, but the description is rather precise to be second-hand, which suggests a line of research. I find it interesting, and again coincidental, in its mention of Auril and elemental summonings from the Plane of Ice.

Vale