ORIGIN

And here they came, a snarl of bodies half-tangled in the snowy dark: Palefur first, her cream form a mere flash as she passed into the sudden stillness, the powder-soft quiet, of the Crucible. It was darker, here; strangely silent, the small cat's each step a gentle crunch of snow. Every sound was muffled. The air tasted of metal: that tang of bitter cold.

Behind her came Desert Rose: neither pushing ahead, nor falling behind. And behind him-... Empty space. Dim light, and howling snow. Where was Agate-? Lost, it seemed, stumbled off the path and vanished into the consuming white.

Far behind, the bristling, stiff white hide of the Ice Worm glided smoothly, like a shark in water, past Kalama and Imp--vanishing into the ground below. It left nothing but eerie silence and falling snow in its wake. It was Vinea who it came for next: implacable white death, surging up with unsettling elegance with open maw of razor teeth, to grip the lone Gembound and swallow it away. But even if it succeeded, one small Gembound would not be enough. Indeed, nothing would, for the Ice Worm had been created to consume, a destroyer of worlds, a reset button for a hell all its own, and it would not stop here.

It came next for the rest who had gone astray: for Ivory, for Wynter; Fisher, and for Shida. And this time there was no mercy to be found. To turn back, to try and save these Gembound from the rising maw that eclipsed the very earth beneath it, was to face death oneself. Indeed its first breach of the snow caught Null: flinging him into the air hard enough to break bones.

It seemed that the winter, or its harbinger, might be the death of them after all.

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Palefur and Desert Rose, though now separated, have both safely reached the Crucible. It is eerily dim and quiet. They do not need to roll.

Agate has become lost in the blizzard, and must roll to find their way to the Crucible, or they will succumb to the cold, and die.

Vinea is being directly targetted by the Ice Worm, and must roll to escape it; if successful, he may rejoin the main group. If he fails, he will be consumed.

Null will have at least one limb's bones shattered by the Ice Worm's abrupt ascent. He and Ivory, Wynter, Fisher and Shida must all roll to save themselves. Failure will result in their deaths. Virgil, Hargrave, Warrior, Lyra and Oleander may choose to flee for safety, or risk their own safety and stay behind to attempt to aid them, but a failure will result in their own, critical injury, which may in the long term cause death. Any would-be rescue attempt or escape attempt which rolls a critical fail will be consumed. The exception is Warrior, who, on a critical fail, will suffer a critical injury.