After five days of travel along the battered mining road to Beryl, after climbing some thousands of feet into the Malpara Mountains, the troupe finally reaches the outcropping overlooking Beryl itself.
Where Opal is an arctic mining town relatively full of life, energy, and populated (mostly) by freemen, Beryl is a grim, desolate outpost on the northern flank of the Upheaval. It is a prison town whose population is an indentured labor force and those that support the mines.
Into this morass of grey despair the troupe plunges, scouting through the outer city for the quartermaster. After a few hours of aimless wandering, they eventually find him in a small house on the north side of the Middle Bridge and sell the entire load of iron tools at a satisfying profit.
Business completed, Grimsby isn’t finished. He leads the troupe into the back of his home which is a cluttered topiary of knicknacks great and small. Within the mess, he uncovers a wooden box, that contains dirt, which contains another wooden box, which contains dirt, which contains another wooden box that immediately frosts over. He warns those present to stand back and opens the final box and there is a whirling blast of staggering cold. So cold that the air itself begins to freeze and condense into ice on the ground in a raging torrent of wind and noise.
Grimsby slams the lid shut and replaces the dirt-and-wood insulation. “We dug this out of mine number seven and it killed five men before we managed to cover it back up by collapsing the tunnel. I’ll give this to you for 600 silver,” he says. “Surely those strange duergar in Opal will find value in this… whatever it is.”
Mar’Khabazza takes the box as well as a load of copper and cobalt ore hoping for a resale in the open market and, less than 12 hours later, flees the grey land of Beryl for the familiar grounds of Opal.