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The following reports were received via messengers and included the recorded thoughts and feelings of Lazlo Lemont II. Given the pervasive and apparently continent-wide reach of the events, it is very possible that they bear remarkable resemblance to the feelings and thoughts of others.
A Breath of Cold
As the sun sinks toward the horizon, a chill breeze blows up from the north. It bears with it an odd smell, and a feeling of great foreboding. Something is coming, and you're not the only one to feel it: dogs huddle closer to the fire, whimpering rather than barking or howling, and the animals in the woods and wilds seem to all be migrating south, even those that normally stay for the winter.
The Coming of Winter
The cold grows more biting now. Some animals have begun to hibernate, and game in the lands to the north is much more scarce now. Some sharp-eyed people on the northern coasts have also reported looking out to sea and seeing a strange fog bank sitting on the horizon. Ships sailing in that direction have stopped returning, and the peasants are really beginning to fear that something terrible is coming.
A Foreboding Mist
With the coming of dawn today, there are numerous reports from the areas on the coast that the fog bank a few had seen off-shore yesterday has now advanced so that it is clearly visible to all, and some parts of the land are now enveloped in it. Those who have gone into the fog (or who now live in it) report hearing strange sounds, like a terribly huge creaking and grinding coming from some distance offshore. Among this, there are occasional bloodcurdling howls and shrieks coming from the same direction.
The strangest and most disturbing reports come from those few sharp-eyed souls who have been able to look out on the fog from a high place. They report seeing the mists lie low along the sea at first, not rising much above the height of a tall house, but some distance out to sea, there seems to be a much taller fog bank rising out of the first.
Lost In The Mist
On the coast, the mists have thickened considerably, but they have not come much further inland yet. However, rumours are beginning to spread of a killing frost that is beginning to afflict at least one region within the fog. Peasants are beginning to flee in earnest as half the crops and livestock they were relying on to feed them begin to die of the cold.
The Walls of Winter
The grinding, cracking sounds people reported hearing from the fog have grown much louder and more distinct now, and large chunks of ice have been seen washing ashore on the beaches of Tellwood, Alani, and Yule. The water in Icegate's harbour is beginning to form a skin of ice in the calm areas, and the harbourmaster has been talking about ordering the ships there to leave, lest they be trapped if it freezes solid, or sunk by large chunks of ice washed in on the tide.
Above the fog, the air in the north is very clear tonight, and the full moon is remarkably bright. But an answering glow seems to come from the north, beyond the low ground fog. Lookouts in high towers in Icegate and Bisquez, and even as far away as Saler, can see the moonlight reflecting off a wall of white rising high above the sea and the fog, and its glow of reflected moonlight can be seen as far south as the mountains of Moramroth on this clear night.
Even from this far away, as impossible as it is to believe, what they see can now be unmistakably identified: it is the front edge of an immensely tall glacier, advancing inexorably upon the land.
A New Resolve
For days, the northern peasants have been living in fear of the advancing ice, and the strange and terrible monsters it seems to bring with it. Today, though, there seems to be a change in their mood. They talk less of despair, and more of rising to the challenge and striking out to find new lands—whether or not someone else already holds them. More begin to show up at the recruitment centers, and those already recruited and the newly signing declare quite firmly that they don't care how far they have to go or if they don't get paid (much) until they have a new homeland: they're in this to make a new start.
As rumours of these events begin to come back to those in the southern lands, the peasants and minor nobles alike begin to speak in worried tones of what is to come. Do all these strange events presage a terrifying migration of armies out of the north, bent on carving new homes out of their own lands in the south?
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