Antarctic fun

A fancy dinner party is held for all remaining tournament contestants. Each attendee is given a seal, which they are asked to guard and not open. Finding strong guardians for these seals was apparently the (an?) ulterior motive behind the tournament. Them all being opened is bad news, no further details are given.

Shortly afterwards we meet up with our friend Cresentius. He gives us the following three bits of info:

1) John Cresentius is a very helpful guy these days when it comes to side quests related to Jan Seyoum's growing badness. He tells us that he and Jan Teleported to Antarctica. Jan fought some folks off screen, then returned with a grin on his face. We go to check it out, and find the following from a combination of speaking to the DDR's dead gnome cleric and stone telling on some rocks near him: While adventuring in Antarctica, the DDR, fearing the end of the world, wanted to leave to a safer place. The went to a magic amphitheater in Antartica taht held a pool in the bottom. The pool was dangerous in some way (rocks say "people put stuff in, but nothing ever comes back out"). Their cleric (The Master of Flame, a Zoroastrian gnome), being old and leukemiotic, chose death instead, and sat down and caught ablaze. The DDR dumps the Ark in the pool and then disappears. All well and good. Some time after, but not too long after, three guys show up: One pale guy and two dark-skinned guys. One of the dark-skinned guys has on shiny black armor, and the other one is wearing a red shirt. They throw a sword in the pool. While they are there Jan Seyoum shows up. He kills one of the dark-skinned guys (the one with the red shirt), but then he talks with the other two and they seem to come to an understanding. Jan throws a stone in the pool, then leaves happy. The two guys use a sword to freeze the pool solid, then roll it out of the amphitheater. We show up a little later and fight a bunch of monsters, talk to The Master of Flame, take some rocks, and leave.

2) Cresentius has two "awesome sweet mounts". One is a flying skeleton, the other is a winged black cat. Evelake borrowed the cat for a week.

3) In Rome the pope is raising a crusade against some sort of haunted nunnery. I wonder where that could be...