We skip forward a few episodes now, since I couldn't be arsed keeping up to date.
The team have been given a task by the wizard BAN, the father of Princess Priscilla, who they rescued from the goblin-knight Arzxzkil in a previous episode.
The task is straightforward, on the face of it. They are to take a silk cloth, on which is painted a complex mandala, to the Loneliest Abbey, up in amongst the highest mountains. Once there, they are to spread the cloth, and place in the centre of the mandala a silver model of a door, through which Ban can pass. Essentially, the team has to do all the hard work of getting there, so that Ban can just step through.
They've travelled through the forest by one of the Forest Roads, then struck off the path towards the mountains, and now have started climbing the mountains. After a time of climbing, they came upon an ancient road carved into the mountain, which they followed up through pines and firs and eventually up above the tree-line into the snow and fog. The road way was, at one time, a major work of engineering, with worked stone kerbs and regular carved marker posts in the form of stylised human(oid) figures
An eery occurrence: while encamped, they began seeing a mysterious apparition, or possibly more than one, hanging in the air a short distance from where they were camped. It (or they) did not respond to any conversation, and didn't appear to be doing anything other than watch them. It (or they) appeared for just a few minutes at a time, and then faded away again, and they only ever saw it at night.
At the end of their third day of climbing the mountain road, they spied the glow of lamps or fires up ahead, though the mists reduced visibility such that they could make out no detail.
They started to hear occasional small falls of gravel from above them, running down the mountainside on to the road. They could see or hear nothing else in the gathering dark and fog.
Another disturbing occurrence: they came upon a group of stone statues clustered against the mountain-ward side of the road, all remarkably detailed, and all naked.
Not long afterwards, they found another statue, this time of a deer, lying in the middle of the road, its skinny little legs and antlers broken off.
By the time it was fully night, they arrived at the source of the lights.
The figures on the steps they found, once again, to be of stone. But this time they were fully clothed and equipped with sturdy, and most importantly thick and warm cloaks, which Our Heroes immediately requisitioned. They fossicked through the rest of the unfortunates' belongings, but found nothing worth nicking, and nothing to indicate who they were or where they were going. Most importantly, they didn't find any convenient maps with "This Way To Ye Loneliest Abbeye" written on them. Oh well.
Cajetan cast his Wyvern Watch spell over their camp site, which proved to be a literal life-saver, since when the inevitable attack by the BASILISK occurred, and it failed its save, it gave them a few rounds in which to kill it before it could respond.
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| The Basilisk |
The only casualty was, alas, Cajetan himself, who incautiously met the gaze of the beast and was immediately petrified.
They bundled the immobile (and now very heavy) form of Cajetan on to the travois they'd been using to haul firewood, and dragged him on up the steps.
As she passed under the arch, Ali appeared to fade away into the fog. Unfazed (relatively unfazed, anyway) Tirana followed after her, as did Olaf and Oliver (both being semi-inert NPCs at this time).
They all burst out into dazzling daylight, looking across a snowy defile towards an ancient and ruinous mountain fortress. Cajetan immediately sat up, showering tiny flakes of stone everywhere.
