Twitch shook the frost from her fur and cursed her luck. If You have a sense of humor, mighty Traveler , she thought. I hope You've had Your fun. Ever since Envy and the Outcasts had set out to aid Envy's brother, Eredinn ir'Liadon, things had not gone smoothly for the companions. Their first setback had come with Eredinn's message, which Eredinn had sent via House Sivis to Envy. Eredinn had been conducting business of some kind with Envy's parents on the distant island continent of Aerenal, ancestral home of the elves, when Eredinn had been arrested for illegal dealing in ancient elvish artifacts. Envy's parents had fled, leaving Eredinn to face the charges alone. Envy decided to help her brother, and the rest of the Outcasts agreed to come along--but how to get to Aerenal? Sailing on The Seven Sins could take weeks, and would involve crossing hazardous and unknown waters. Hiring a Lyrandar airship would be faster--perhaps a week--but expensive. As the Outcasts pondered their options, a blond-haired elven stranger approached Envy, introduced himself as Tellian Amakiir, and offered to help. It turned out that Tellian not only was a devotee of Levistus, but was an accomplished wizard who knew both the teleportation circle spell and the rune combination to the teleportation circle in the Aerenal capital city of Shae Mordai. Twitch found all this terribly convenient, but she sensed no guile in the blond elf, and the Outcasts availed themselves of the rapid transport to Aerenal. The elven capital was as foreign to Twitch as some of the outer planes through which the companions had traveled. Undead elves walked the streets side by side with the living without comment. The inhabitants of the city seemed thoroughly dedicated to perfecting their individual crafts to the exclusion of all else. Even the motley assembly of the Outcasts drew no comment or second glances among the living and undead elves--a fact that Twitch found almost more unnerving than otherwise. The Outcasts made their way to the holding cells where Eredinn was incarcerated. Envy spoke to her brother and discovered that he had been charged with racketeering for the illegal sale of ancient artifacts, even though Eredinn claimed to be largely unaware of what their parents' business involved. Envy pledged to help her brother, given that their parents seemed to be the ones most culpable. The Outcasts sought and obtained an audience with the Council of Shae Mordai, and the Council offered a deal--locate and secure Envy's parents, and the Council would free Envy's brother and pay a bounty of 50,000 gold for the parents. The Outcasts agreed. Through Twitch's scrying and Tellian's contact with otherworldly powers, the Outcasts soon determined that Envy's parents were on the plane of Eternal Ice--the home of Levistus. Again, the Outcasts were presented with a dilemma--how were they to reach the other plane? The companions learned that the Council's librarian, an elf named Galen, had the means for planar travel. The Outcasts traveled to Galen's library and spoke to him. Galen offered to sell them scrolls of planar travel for 200 platinum pieces "each," which Twitch (and to be fair, at least a few of the other companions) heard to mean 200 platinum pieces per each companion . Twitch decided in the moment to try to use the Traveler's abilities to change Galen's mind, but Galen countered Twitch's spell with ease and grew outraged. Twitch beat a hasty and apologetic retreat while the others completed the transaction--which, it turned out, cost 200 platinum per scroll , a much more manageable expense. Having avoided a crisis with an enraged librarian, the companions used one of the scrolls to travel to the plane of Eternal Ice. Apart from the bitter cold that assailed them upon their arrival, wild ice creatures--both smaller and vicious white abishai, as well as giant ice worms--also greeted the companions with a bloodthirsty assault. The companions beat back the attacks and set out on foot across an icy plateau; in the distance, a giant castle made of ice rose above the horizon of the snow-swept tableau. The doors of the castle swung open, ominously, upon the Outcasts' approach. Within, Envy's parents, Lord and Lady ir'Liadon, waited in a majestic icy throne room with Levistus himself sitting upon the enormous central throne. Envy and Tellian addressed themselves to Levistus and requested his permission to take Envy's parents back to Eberron to face justice, but the demon lord refused. Levistus explained that Envy's parents were useful servants to him, as well as being very powerful. Levistus told the companions that he doubted that the companions could defeat Envy's parents in combat, and that even if they did, Levistus himself would be compelled to stop them. The companions conferred and quickly agreed that fighting a demon lord in his seat of power seemed like a losing proposition. But just as the Outcasts turned to leave, the doors to the castle shut and Envy's parents moved to attack! Their assault came fast and furiously; before any of the companions could act, the powerful elves had brought down giant deadly icicle stalactites on the group from the ceiling and had blasted the group with waves of icy cold. It seemed like Envy's parents were in their own lair of power; even without Levistus's help, the two elves seemed to move faster than even the fastest of the companions and acted again just as quickly as even one of the companions could move to act. Battered and half-frozen, the companions decided to retreat to the relative safety of Eberron and regroup. With the companions forming a circle, Tellian used a second planar travel scroll to return the companions to Shae Mordai. Back in the elven capital, the Outcasts tended to their wounds, rested, and contemplated their next steps. Should they try simply to break Eredinn out of jail? Should they gather materials to risk a second attempt on Envy's parents in Levistus's (and apparently Lord and Lady ir'Liadon's) lair of power? Could the Outcasts lure Envy's parents to Eberron, where the companions might hope to have a better chance of victory? For her part, Twitch contemplated that the companions had now run from no fewer than three adversaries--the Dragon Prince, the demon lord of the realm of the Slaads, and now Envy's parents in Levistus's realm. To be sure, the pirate code stressed that one must often fight to run away; but Twitch wondered whether the Outcasts were flirting with disaster too frequently. On one hand, the Outcasts had grown powerful; on the other, the forces against which they were now aligned were truly otherworldly. Against such forces, what hope could a pack of misfits such as the Outcasts realistically have?