Mandalain's Demise

The clinic was quiet and still dark.  Suddenly a bolt of lightning illuminated the foyer.  Creepy shadows crept along the walls.  Grunyar was rifling the body of Dr. Tasker but he found only a set of keys on a keyring.  Ralom was interested in the blades of the thugs.  Arvien identified them as +3 daggers.  Everyone but Drovic took one.

The party then headed down the hall toward Dr. Illhousen's office.  The door was shut.  Grunyar opened it without hesitation.  Inside in a flash of lightning he saw Dr. Illhousen seated next to a creature in a white uniform, stained and tattered.  Her hair was wild with white streaks.  Her eyes, empty pools of shadow.  Her long slender fingers were no longer, instead they were surgical scalpels.  The creature was fuzzy, incorporeal Grunyar guessed as he notched an arrow.  Seglun charged into the room followed by Baru.  Ralom hid in the corner as did Varrid, who was looking for an opening to flank.  Arvien and Drovic stayed just outside the door in the shadows of the hall.
An unholy aura surrounded the party as Mandalain unleashed a blight on the party.  Some members were harmed and sickened while others just took the evil damage.  Summergale was untouched.  Baru, Seglun and Grunyar surrounded the Terror as Arvien moved into the doorway and brandished the Rose of Midnight.  The party struck, meekly, against the incorporeal creature.  Just as she was casting Blaspheme, Baru struck a mighty blow, interrupting her incantation.  Just after a moonbeam entered the room and illuminated the Rose.  Mandalain became corporeal.  With their blows now more effective the group dodged the scalpels as they slashed back and forth in front of Mandalain.  Ralom grabbed the good Doctor from his seat and dragged him into a corner of the room.  Illhousen seemed to be in a trance as he didn't react at all. 
The front line fighters were facing their demise as Ralom hurried in to channel divine healing and the battle continued.  With the blows now fully effective the party was able to dispatch the Night Terror.  As they did, Dr. Illhousen sat up and shook the cobwebs from his mind.  The party felt the last of Flora's curse drain from their bodies and felt fully capable of rest and recovery.  Dr. Illhousen thanked the party for delivering him from Mandalain clutches.  He hoped to be able to help the patients of the Clinic recover once again.
Ralom queried him about Dr. Tasker, and Gregorian explained the Dr. Tasker had been lured by the Nightmare Court into evil.  He had been abusing the patients and seemingly running his own ward to turn the good people of Egertus to the dark side.
The heroes spent a couple of days in Egertus trying to buy, trade or acquire some more new items.  One day a young emissary arrived from Kantora seeking help for his master.   It seemed as though the mansion house was haunted and the Lord was looking for a group to dispel the evil.  After a day or so the heroes decided to take up the cause.  Off they headed west toward Kantora.
The second night turned cold and damp, and frigid mists blanketed the countryside.  A rime of clear ice settled over the branches of the trees, and the ground was covered with white frost.  The warmth of the fire was a comfort against the chill of the evening.
In the distance, the ghostly howl of a wolf rose.  Its forlorn cry seemed to sap the warmth from the fire as an icy chill permeated the camp.  Even with weapons close at hand, there was unease in the misty darkness away from the fire -- something was not right.
The mists swirled and eddied, and then a dark shape emerges and stumbled forward.  It was a strangely dressed man, and he tottered forward and collapsed.  He was wearing thick furs and a hooded cape, his boots were made from buckskin.  Broken snowshoes were strapped to his back, and clutched in his hand was a blood-stained hatchet.
Ralom hurried to his side where he found a face, ghostly white, with a pattern of deep blue wounds surrounded by patched of white frost marking his throat and arms.  A long, flowing beard and drooping mustache framed his swarthy face.  Ralom reached toward the face and recoiled, his skin literally burned with cold to Ralom's touch.
The silence was pierced by the haunting howl of a wolf, much nearer than the last one.  A great white wolf with red eyes emerged from the mists a few yards away.  The mists clung to it, and with a quick twist it was gone, padding off again into the fog and cold.  IT turned and glanced back once, and then the mists rolled in to conceal it once more.
Ralom found that the stranger was frozen and quite beyond his help.  The stranger's backpack held a hunting knife and composite short bow, but no arrows.  There were a few scraps of dried meat also.  The wolf drifted in and out of vision, darting and disappearing in the mists and the shadows.  Baru and Seglun moved toward it but it once again disappeared into the mists.  The air around it was amazingly colder, and every breath drawn in burned nostrils and lungs with its frostiness.
In a lightning-swift leap, the wold attacked, along with two mates, silently snapping and lunging as the mists closed in.  The wolf seemed almost spectral, taking form from the mist, then disappearing again in a swirl of fog, only to reappear and attack from another direction.  The surrounding shouts and sounds of struggle seemed strangely distant and weak.
Seglun was bitten first by the monstrous white wolf.  Waves of cold numbed her whole body as the wolf's fangs found their mark.  The pain and darkness overcame her, and she fell to the ground racked by horrible chills.  As she collapsed the rest of the party saw the mist rush in to cover the body.  Seglun watched her mates reacting in horror and the they disappeared.
The party pressed their attack on the wolves but one by one each member felt the icy fangs and numbing cold and then fell to the ground.

Darkness and cold swirled about, and all sense of direction was completely obscured by the mists.  Heartbeats slowed and stopped int he numbing emptiness.  Time seemed to hang suspended, and the darkness lasted but a moment -- or perhaps and eternity -- before white, blinding light erupted everywhere.  In the next instant, reality returned in the form of cold, dry snow.
There was a bitter, biting cold that, unlike the frigid night mists from before, was obviously not supernatural.  It was, however, more numbingly icy, more absolutely arctic, than seemed possible.  Exposed hands and faces were already becoming clumsy and painful, with needles of searing cold piercing the skin in a maddening assault.
Slowly looking around the heroes saw each other among several varieties of evergreens -- mostly pine, spruce and fir -- which stretched out as far as the eye could see.  Powdery snow lay over the branches and in deep drifts beneath the boles of the trees, creating an eldritch realm of sparkling ice and delicate white structures. It would be quite beautiful if it were not so bitterly cold.
The day was deepening toward twilight, and the approaching night was likely to bring unendurable cold.  The party was devoid of coats and furs, but even those they knew off would not be protection in this place.
The immediate surrounding held nothing but dark, brooding forest and deep drifts of snow.  No landmarks of any kind could be seen in the frozen wilderness.  The cold, dry air left throats and noses burning.  The wind carried on it from far away the howl of a wolf.  The sun had dipped below the horizon, and although it was barely imaginable, it was growing colder.
A more careful search of the hauntingly quiet area revealed a set of tracks in the snow leading toward a small clearing nearby.  They were the footprints of a single man, with numerous animal tracks overrunning the man's prints.  The group followed them, trudging slowly through the drifts, hands and faces throbbing with pain.  The human footprints appeared to end in the middle of the clearing.

DM's Notes:  The party earned 1,371 XP for destroying the Night Terror Mandalain.