Hearts of Ice (day 1, Lamashan [October] 4708 AR)

Inside the tent, a freakishly small, soot-smeared barker wearing a threadbare wool suit and a top hat incited a crowd, directing attention to the various pieces of machinery around the room as he deftly rattled off his pitch:

"Step right up! Step right up, folks! See the world's most magnificent manipulations of modern machinery! Guaranteed to chop, dice, and saw away yer troubles! You'll just die when you see'em! Welcome to the convenience of the modern age!"

The dark ice fey seized this tent and used the machinists, engineers, and other folk who were supposed to operate and service the machines to put on exciting displays, demonstrating the power of the machinery by feeding it lumberjacks, millworkers, and lumber barons who stopped by to experience the wonder of the carnival. This encounter was a factory of death.

Anyone approaching too close to a machine risked grisly death. While operating, all machines created a threatened area. Whenever an individual entered that area, they were subject to the machine's attacks. Mrunk and Wrack entered these machines' threatened spaces and were attacked by swinging blades, slashing pendulums, or other similar contraptions. Individual machines were stopped by dealing damage to single machines.

The blade of doom was suspended from an old catapult frame, and was a massive circular sawblade with a diameter the length of a cow that spinned at a blinding speed. A conveyor belt crafted entirely from spiked chain hauled people toward the whirling monstrosity that rent them in half as easily as a plough tills land. Wrack got grappled by the conveyor belt. Seoni deactivated the machine before he passed through the blade, and everyone helped to free him.

The chipper was a long wooden chute that led to a gaping metal opening filled with several twirling axles, each fitted with dozens of rapidly rotating blades.

The ten splitter was responsible for the relentless chopping of a mechanized row of ten axes, all attached to a lever and pulley system. Two laborers loaded the machine by placing people upright beneath the blades. Then with a single pull of the main lever, all the axes fell, dramatically killing all ten people at once.

In the debarker people were bolted to titanic iron gears and locked into a frame, creating a giant rotating spindle. As people span, a huge mechanical arm fixed with an oversized lathe blade slammed into them, killing them into thick slices.

The planer was a board-maker of amazing power, demonstrated by one of the lumberjacks who gleefully tossed people between twin churning drums covered with iron rasps. They screamed as their remains popped out the other side.

The board press was a machine that restored and flattened warped boards using steam and pressure. Now it was used to place people onto a bed of short spikes, after which a heavy iron spike was latched down over the top. Giant turnscrews created incredible pressure while a series of twisted copper pipes spilled boiling hot water down on the device, bathing everything in a cloud of scalding steam. After the steam cleared, the screws were released and the remains popped out.

The stacker was a device that stacked and bound cords of wood into shipping pallets.Currently people were thrown down a chute on automated shuffling panels. The remains were then dropped onto panels squared off by iron bars. As soon as the pallet fills to the top, another helper pulled a lever that dropped down a device that looked like an oversized horseshoe from some scaffolding above. It fit neatly over the cord, and when it retracted, it bound all the remains together with small chains.

When the heroes disrupted the Modern Engineering tent, a quickling begun to taunt them from a safe distance. Even better the quickling paraded the witch ice shard in full view of the heroes, giving them an opportunity to gain Quinn's aid. Before they can destroy the shard, though, first they must catch its keeper, and that is no mean feat.

The quickling is 2-1/2 feet tall and extremely gaunt, with elfin features and pale, bluish skin. Long, slender ears rise to a sharp point near the top of his head and his hair flows behind him like quicksilver. He wears a shirt and leggings woven from leaves and tree bark. He called out to the heroes, "So these are the foolish mortals that are spoiling my master's plans. Silly creatures, your salvation is before you, but you can't catch me!" At this point he darted away into the crowd and disappeared. The heroes recognized the witch ice shard around his neck.

The quickling's chase led the heroes all over the carnival grounds from area to area. As he moved through the carnival Mrunk detected his exact location and Seoni targeted him with attacks as his capricious carousing showed signs of his presence. When the heroes moved through an area they drew the notice of any fey (or other threats) and were attacked as the quickling made his getaway.

The delicious scent of sugary berries and fresh baked pastry wafted by, drifting from a tent near the river. Waving high in the air above it, a blue silk banner beckoned "Biggy-Piggy Pie-Eating Contest!" in bright gold letters. Beneath the banner lay a twenty-foot long table covered with a red-checkered tablecloth. Seated at a bench before the table, twelve local contestants eagerly stared at the tremendous steaming pies placed before them. With napkins tucked into their shirts and their hands tied behind their backs, they awaited the signal to begin. Near the table, a wooden sign staked into the ground read "Entrance Fee: 2 Coppers, Winner Gets Fat Prize!"

To the left of the table, the event's sponsor emerged from behind a wheeled cart bearing the weight of a coal-burning oven. With a bellowing voice that complimented his immense rotundness, the pie chef yelled "Begin!" Within seconds, contestants' faces eagerly plunged into the fresh-baked pies as they slobbered and gnashed their way to victory.

Once the competition started, the chef happily filled new pie crusts with a strange device that looked like a giant butter churn attached to a spinning wheel with a big foot pedal. In the front of a churning chamber, a metal spigot attached to a 10-foot hose. When the pie chef stomped the pedal, steam shot out the top of the churn as gouts of pie filling erupted from the hose.

The Master of Ceremonies for the Pie-Eating Contest was a corpulent anthropomorphic hog. He happily fed contestants slop-filled pies packed with rotten entrails. Behind his tent grazed a dozen or so pigs.

Stepping on the foot-pump of the pie-filling machine released a cloud of steam that compressed a central chamber crammed with pie filling. This forced the filling through a long flexible cloth hose connected to a brass fitting that shot the filling into a pie.

The quickling dashed behind the stove and alerted the manhog that the heroes were tailing him. As the contest began, the quickling darted across the table, stomping the contestant's heads into the pies, suffocating them in a bizarre dance. This maneuver allowed the manhog time to position himself behind the oven with the pie-filing machine.The quickling left towards the Titan's Wheel but left behind an easily tracked set of pie-stain footprints trailing down toward the river. The manhog cast a spell before he ran behind the oven for cover, remaining within reach of his pie-filling machine.