Following the trail the expedition found two men defending themselves from a troll assault. One human and one silf. The party couldn’t leave them to certain death and intervened. After a heavy fight the last troll went down.
The silfs name was Hydar, an alchemist, and was in the mountains to search for ingredients only found this far north. His companions name was Rivera. A bard from the noble families of Alfatri. He accompanied Hydar in the hope that he could base a new epic on his adventures. Unfortunately, neither had accomplished their goal due to the dangers of the mountains.
After seeing the prowess of the expedition the two men offered their services in exchange for the protection such a large group could offer. The journey then went further north and west to Linneberch. After some days searching the area the expedition uncovered parts of a road leading north.
Navigating through and between the cliffs and gorges the expedition followed the road. After about a week the passed over a summit and saw a large fjord and a ruined city sprawling around the water and into the mountainsides. Everything was quiet and some light snow was begining to fall, signaling the coming end of fall. The city, unknown to the expedition, was empty. No one had lived there in decades, centuries even. The wildlife and ocean had reclaimed most of it already.
Searching the city an underground complex was discovered. A huge room sprawled under the city center and had the same layout as Steinens minne, “Memory of the Stone”, the jor’dnaga archives and the place of worship. To stories high and both floors a perfect square. The top floor is placed askew so that from above the room forms a perfect symmetrical eight-point star. The only thing left intact in the old Memory was a dias with a large gem encrusted skull of a frost serpent. Creatures living deep in the everlasting glaciers of Vettefjellene and hunted down to the brink of extinction for their glands. The concoction produced in these glands was, and is, the sole important ingredient in the making of cold forged iron, the only known efficient weapon against creatures of the underworld.
The glands of this particular serpent was already far gone, but the skull was the only thing of value the expedition had found in the city and thus brought it with them. While the jor’dnaga engineers built a contraption large enough to lift the skull out the party searched on. In an other part of the underground complex they found a local map showing that this city was not the fabeled Fallan, but actually just Fallans closest harbour. Karak Fallan lay further west, at the very edge of Vol Iashkin, Istaket (The ice roof). Vol Iashkin was an enormous glacier resting atop the highest peaks in the area and leaning onto Ûngal hiđ moran, Evighetsspydet (The spear of eternity), the highest peak for miles.
Packing up, the expedition left and followed the route suggested on the local map towards karak Fallan.