Ice Gate
Before venturing onward, the party picks up a ranger named Brun who knows the region well and is heading northeast. After a long journey around the Darkwood, the party finally arrives in Ice Gate. The party comes into the city asking questions. The owner of the trading post directs them to a mountain man, fur trader who is in town. Jaskar the Half Blood, the fur trader, tells them about a borrellian village named Leki. The people of that village recently abandoned their home en masse. A strange occurrence. The village is not far from the map coordinates. The party decides that it is not coincidence. Party stocks up on cold weather supplies and begin their snowy trek out to where the where the map coordinates indicate the fifth skull is.
The Children of the Frost Lord
Upon reaching the approximate location indicated by the map, the party searches the region. They hear the sounds of peole chanting and singing and investigate. Upon cresting the last hill, they come across a large group of borrellian men, women and children. The people of the village of Leki. They appear to be gathered around the entrance to an ice cave and are engaged in worship and prayer.
The characters approach the group and parlay. The speak with the village leader, a hatraddi shaman. He tells the group that their god, Urthal, the Ice King, has led his people to this sacred place and wonders beyond description had been prepared for his followers within the cave. The characters bluff their way past the shaman and into the ice cave.
The Realm of the Frost Lord
[In actuality, what lay beneath their feet, buried in the glacier, was not a gateway to some frozen paradise. In truth, a starship lay buried beneath the ice... one that had crash-landed long ago. The ice cave led to one of the main airlocks. Of course, the players did not know this. The characters would not understand this. ]
The characters entered the ice cave and passed through some sort of gateway (airlock). As they ventured deeper into the strange realm, they found unusual the corridors where fashioned from unusual stone with strange glyphs and markings inscribed therein. (Starship corridors made of a high-tech ceramic material with plates, corridor junctions and alien writing). Everywhere they ventured, they found that the walls were frozen and snow lay underfoot. (The environmental systems were malfunctioning and a coolant leak from engineering was crystallizing engine coolant in the air which was being deposited in a snow like powder on the floor throughout the ship).
Soon the characters entered a large chamber which appeared to be of dwarven construction (although not one of the party could really say what dwarven construction looked like - they were guessing). Strange stonework was carved in odd geometric arrangements that rose up high like giant pillars and long blocks. Many of these were connected to the walls and ceilings. Black ropes were fastened to and from hanging high overhead. (In actuality, this was the engineering section and the strange construction was the hyperdrive. Metal and ceramic engineering components looked like stone. The engines appeared to be dwarven constructions. Piping, tubes and wiring were mistaken for black rope.)
In this large chamber, the characters were stumbled upon and did battle with a large, mutated humanoid creature. (A troll which was feeding off of the radiation of the damaged hyperdrive).
Later, in another large chamber (main cargo hold) they did battle with a ogre knight in shining plate mail armor. (Security droid).
As they explore the strange ship, they find the frozen bodies of strange creatures that appear to be demons.
Eventually, the characters came upon a chamber in which three intact bodies were emerged in a mass of clear goo (a protoplasmic gelatinous creature which had absorbed the bodies and later died). The bodies were perfectly preserved. One of the three bodies was the fifth conclave wizard. His head was the fifth skull. The characters extracted his body and severed his head. They then burned the flesh from the skull, tossed it in a sack with the other skulls and began searching for a way out. It was necessary that they find a different way out. The borrellians and the shamans would be watching the ice cave through which the characters had entered and would not take kindly to them plundering holy ground and stealing godly artifacts. Fortunately, the characters did find another exit (a breach in the hull of the starship and a rift in the glacier).
The characters check the map and the coordinates have shifted to indicate that the sixth and final skull is located in the Citadel, capital city of Duthelm. They have come full circle.
The Chase
Characters emerge from the depths of the glacier back into the world of sunlight only to find that the borrellians are embroiled in a battle with strange demons (aliens) who fight from flying carts (anti-grav air rafts) and shoot beams of light from wands (plasma rifles). These demons appear to be the same race as the frozen bodies in the chambers below. The party speculated that these demons must have been alerted by their trespassing and had come to retrieve those items taken. The players flee, but one flying cart with three demons aboard follow them. The characters are forced to fight. With the help of some well-placed spells and arrows, the characters manage to cause the flying cart to crash into a snowdrift and the three demons are thrown overboard.
After a short battle with the aliens, two of them are dead and the third is captured. The players interrogate the alien and learn that there are others who will track the air raft. The players decided to have the alien (at gun point) fly them to Duthelm. They land just outside of Dominion on the coast. There they kill the alien and dump both air raft and alien body into the waters of the sea.
They proceed into Dominion on foot.