Mountain Climb

The party starts their morning in the town of Targos, having breakfast before heading out in search of Garret. Keegan meets the party at the inn, offering to let them take Boy as a guide to help find his lost husband. They decide to take some fairly well traveled trails to make their way to Kelvin's Cairn. 

About halfway into their journey, the party sees what looks to be a desiccated corpse sitting in the snow. As they move to investigate they find that they have been walking on the back of an ancient white dragon, who isn't pleased about being woken up. As she rises up out of the snow the party takes cover and thanks in part to the blizzard (and the dragon's questionable eyesight), they escape without confrontation. 

The rest of the journey to Kelvin's Cairn is uneventful, and the party arrives at Garret's base camp as the evening set in. They arrive to find five very hungry sled dogs, who are beyond excited to see some people. As they search the camp they find two crates - one that the dogs broke open to eat the supplies, and another with a decent supply of food. After feeding and tending to the dogs, they settle in for an uneventful night. 

"Morning" comes and the party sets off on the trail to search for Garret behind Boy's excited nose. As they head up the trail, passing a small group of mountain goats, they come upon a smooth section of packed snow crossing the trail. About halfway across they hear a rumble up the mountain - avalanche!! Thorburn and Boy make it to safety, but the rest of the party is swept gently back down the mountainside. They make their way back to Thorburn and continue on.

A bit up the trail they come upon a fallen figure in the snow - it's Garret! Boy runs up to him and they find him beaten, but still alive. As the party tends to his wounds they are jumped by three crag cats that were drawn by the smell of easy prey. 

The cats move in and start delivering some hits to the party. Jamekas launches a stone at one of the crag cats, but some force deflects the spell and sends it rocketing back at his head! Thanks to a lot of luck he dodges his own missile and watches it fly off the mountain where it smacks into a mountain goat. The battle rages on for a little bit before Sircle vaporizes one of the crag cats with a guiding bolt. The other two decide to find easier prey and bound away. 

Now that they are relatively safe, Garret tells the party the story of how he came to be facedown on the trail - he was leading a party of three adventurers: 

• Mokingo Growling Bear Akannathi, a male goliath warrior determined to find Oyaminartok and test his mettle against her
• Perilou Fishfinger, a female lightfoot halfling and Mokingo’s stalwart companion
• Astrix, a female tiefling who mumbles and swears a lot (Garret doesn’t know what her story is)

Farther up the trail the party was jumped by a yeti. Garret attempted to draw the yeti away from his three employers, and succeeded - at least until the yeti knocked him down and lost interest. He has no clue what happened to the others, but implores the party to go find out while he heals up back at base camp. He and Boy set off down the mountain while the party continues along. 

After a perilous climb that exhausts the party a bit, they find themselves in front of a cave. On the trail in front of the cave is blood - and a lot of it. They cautiously make their way into the cave and see a couple of possible paths. Peski takes the initiative and moves off to investigate the ice bridge. He comes out in a larger cavern where he sees a yeti tyke playing around with a frightened halfling. The yeti's mother looks on, and Peski strikes up a conversation.

The rest of the party, still in the other chamber, hears some sort of "language" coming out of Peski. He speaks yeti?? They cautiously make their way over to see what's going on, with Thorburn standing back to guard the rear. They find Peski conversing with the yeti mother, and he very deftly negotiates the release of the halfling who they now realize is Perilou. 

As they make their way back out of the cave, the yeti father shows up! Thankfully Peski has a way with the furry folk and lets him know that his family is safe and they are just taking the halfling to safety. They find out that this is indeed Perilou and she tells the party about Mokingo meeting his demise and Astrix running away. She asks them to go look for Astrix, who must be up the mountain. 

Not too far from the cave, they find Astrix - frozen to death in the snow while staring at a pair of blue boots sticking out of the snow. After looking around a bit they realize that she died from despair - frozen to death after realizing she fled up the mountain instead of down. The party makes their way back to basecamp where they find Garret waiting for them. After a night's rest they make best speed back to Targos. Perilou, thanking the party, peels off for Bryn Shander.

As they bring Garret back to his home, they are welcomed by a thankful Keegan who gives the party some valuable scrimshaw pieces and gives Jamekas some lessons!