In an Icy Cavern

Deep below the Silver City that perches atop the Windwild Glacier, reaching for the sun's fire, are the frozen caves that riddle the mountain of ice.

Snow and stone give way to each other, embracing, hungry, below the city. Echoes howl and bolt through the caves for years or decades, carrying whispers and shouts from prior travellers.

What might you find below the cracked and crusted surface of the Tarnant Barony?

1. A section of tunnels has collapsed, the ice gone rotten. Great chasms and caverns open below and above, interspersed with the dark-gray stone that remains like bones left behind after a body's picked clean. Attempts to cross to the mouth of the tunnel beyond must either go down the slick chasm and back up, or go along bridges of rotted ice - either way is terribly dangerous. This area may also host a minor demon of decay, like an ice mephit.

2. Smooth-walled tunnels of notable regularity in shape and size betray the presence of a remorhaz, a white snake that melts its way through the ice. Its travels make following it easy and safe, but catching up to it risks life and limb.

3. A window into Faerie intersects with the Windwild Glacier, and through a glass-thin, glass-clear pane of ice a wide and wild field can be seen, featuring a towering castle of white, blue, black, and clear ice. The top spires and minarets stretch so high that they should puncture to the surface, one would think. Humming and whispering songs can be heard through the 'glass,' and a traveller could maybe break through.

4. A tunnel stretches through an ancient battleground with at least three sides at war. Stout dwarves, duergar, hold shields in tight formation. Slender sharp white-eyed elves dash among them with long crystalline spears. Here and there giants loom, reduced to shadows behind layers of ice. Bodies are frozen mid-combat or deceased, standing or crumpled, all behind feet or meters of ice. A sword, held by a dead duergar lord, glows like a ghostly torch, near enough to nearly touch. An hour or two of carving could free it...

5. The next cavern echoes with drips and the path zigzags, climbing stairs and sliding down ramps while turning and twisting. From ceiling and floor emerge razor-sharp and thin stalactites and stalagmites of ice, some of which are invisible and some of which are mirrored by some mineral quirk. Travellers in this cavern are likely to get lost, turned around, or shredded to ribbons.

6. A fire giant, devotee of the gods of the forge, makes its smithy down deep here in the stone, cooling its works with ice. The giant welcomes in frozen travellers gladly, as it always needs more hands for the forge. They will work here - fed well, treated well - and work the bellows and twist the wires and cool the works until they die of old age or accident.

7. An ice garden, tended by a frozen dryad, features growing crystals of ice that doesn't melt, ice that's warm, ice that shines brilliant colors, or glows, ice that salts and flavors foods, ice so clear it can be ground for lenses, ice that reflects like a mirror, ice that causes strange lucid dreams when melted into a sleeper's eyes, and many more.