The next day you identified a few items, sold your horses, provisioned and bought a couple pack mules. The following day you loaded up and headed north. It was much colder than you were used to - lows in the minus single digits and some snow almost every day. Three days hike took you to the through the foothills to the foot of the Griffs. The going became much slower. After another three days following the river upstream (and a minor encounter with a couple ogres) you came to a waterfall some 200' tall. From the distance, Balros noticed a fire at the base of the fall. After a closer look, you could see a huge humanoid tending to a meal. Malloric and Golian scouted ahead. They returned and reported it was likely some sort of giant and was alone. There was some debate about attacking immediately or moving up to see if it was hostile. You decided on the latter. Pirozzi, with a tongues spell from D'Argo and at the head of the group as you approached, waved his hand and greeted the giant. It stood with its weapon in hand and greeted you in return. A few minutes of conversation also understood by the dwarves, revealed nothing of interest other than you were both apparently traveling through the area. You left the giant behind and took the rest of the day to scale the several hundred feet up and past the fall.
The river after this point cut a deep chasm in the rock so you were forced to follow it at a distance. The terrain was much more difficult and it was colder yet. One afternoon as you were making your way around some boulders, the ground shook momentarily and to everyone's surprise, a 20' long, light blue worm with dozens of legs burrowed up from the ground just in front of you and snapped at Wolfgar, catching him in its maw. Edwin and Balros lost hold of the mule leads as they bolted. You could feel the heat pulsate from the creature. You responded with arrows and blows while D'Argo and Edwin targeted Wolfgar with grease and resist fire. The beast threw its head back and swallowed Wolfgar whole. He was trying to cut himself out while being ground in its gizzard and burnt from the intense heat inside the creature. Those on the outside continued to try to kill the beast as fast as you could. Each blow on the creature charred your weapons. None took any damage. The beast was soon dead, Wolfgar extricated and Malloric was able to round up only one of the mules. He was relieved that his extra arrows were on the one recovered.
Two nights later, while in the comfort of a tiny hut, those on watch heard wing flaps, slow, heavy wing flaps. Quietly they awoke the group and you waited. After a minute or two the wing flaps returned. A gigantic bird with two mountain goats in its talons landed on a rock outcrop only 50 or so feet away. It ate its meal and looked quizzically at the hemisphere of light. It flew off.
Yet another couple of days hiking through the difficult terrain, you reached a steaming lake. On the far side you found a large circular clearing with seven stone heads, each with an open mouth facing the center. After some conversation, Pirozzi cast detect magic and was able to discern that each head corresponded to a particular school of magic. Between the casters you were able to cast seven spells, one from each of the schools (sans divination). Each time you did, a gold key appeared in the corresponding mouth. When you cast the seventh spell, you all felt the ground "thump." And then nothing. Balros pointed up toward a cave mouth and yelled "Dragon!"
Inside the cave was a long passage. After nearly 200' you were met by two statues one either side of the passage, each with one arm outstretched and palm up as if bidding you to stop. You didn't. Pirozzi cast a quick spell and informed you that they were not magical. As they attacked, D'Argo reminded Pirozzi that elementals won't detect as magical. D'Argo said something in a strange guttural toungue and the elementals responded in kind. D'Argo relayed to the group that the dragon went this way and the elementals weren't going to allow you to pass. "Really!?" someone in the rear replied.
The elementals hit with great force and even though they were easy to hit, their rocky skin deflected some of your damage. Pirozzi hit one with an enfeebling ray making receiving blows from that particular one much more survivable. Soon both were destroyed.
You started further down the passage when nearly simultaneously, Malloric, Wolfgar and Balros slipped on the frosty surface. Balros was able to catch himself, but Malloric and Wolfgar sarted sliding down the passage toward the darkness. Golina flew down to them and was only able to stop their descent as the rest of the group fished for roped from your packs. Mallorid regained his footing and Golian was able to slide Wolgar back up toward the rest. Goloan then flew further down the passage and relayed that it traveled some distance covered in frost and that there was a short area freaa of frost at the end before it fell way to a pit. Edwin threw down his tower shield and he and Pirozzi jumped on and started sledding toward the bottom. Others slid down. Henrik and Balros waited to spike a rope at the top to carefully slide down. Edwin and Pirozzi almost were unable to get off his shield before it hurtled over the edge. Edwin recalled it before it hit the ground. Starting over the edge, you dropped a rock with a light spell. It disappeared into darkness before it hit the ground. You carefully walked down a landing that wound around the walls of the pit.
As you neared the bottom you noticed several large passages - large enough for a dragon - that led off in various directions. Arranged at the bottom of the pit were seven large statues of people all facing an even larger central monolith. In one corner of the room you could see a huge pile of coins, weapons, art, armor, furniture and more. "The dragon must be near." some one whispered. You looked into a couple of passages as you past them. When you reached the ones you though most logical for the dragon to be hiding you explored them deeper. They were empty. As you returned from the second, you were met in the central room by another blast of frost.
The dragon fought to the death this time. It appeared that enough time had past that some of its protections were no longer in effect. However, it appeared nearly unwounded. Golain and Wolfgar were having the most success and the dragon turned its attention to them, doing some significant damage. But it was too little too late for the beast. The treasure pile looked to have literally tens of thousands of coins in it. Pirozzi cast detect magic and his eyes opened wide as he said there were a lot of items in that pile. He also detected on the statues and found these too were of one type each. You found a keyhole on each facing the center. You were relieved that each of the keys also detected as one type of magic as no attempt to keep them separate or organized had been made.
[we ended here. following is a narrative in preparation for next time.]
You gathered up the treasure, counting as best you could and distributed some magic items [and maybe identified a few]. You took the keys to their corresponding statues and as the rhyme directed turned each twice. The central pillar begins to glow and ripple with a vortex of multi-colored light. At the pillar’s base, the vortex whirls in on itself like a vertically aligned whirlpool, opening into a 7-foot-wide circular portal.
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