This story comes from an adventure in the arctic region of my friend's realm. As always, we were using Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Second Edition rules. My character, Maya, was a human female enchantress, and the other two player characters were a Firbolg fighter and a druid of an currently unnamed arctic race created by my friend. A dwarf fighter NPC rounded out the party.

We had been on a search for a lost dwarven artifact: the High Anvil. After falling into the underdark and helping a drow free his sister from their chaotic evil culture, we had managed to recover the High Anvil from the underground fortress where it was being held. Fortunately, Maya had earlier acquired a ring that made the High Anvil levitate, allowing her to push it around easily. We had managed to bring it to the surface and were heading back to Lorne's Keep where we would be safe. There had already been a lot of fighting to this point, and I thought we were probably safe. Unfortunately, our most difficult trial was still ahead.

Five frost giants noticed us pushing the large shiny artifact across the tundra and decided they wanted it. Maya was pretty much out of spells at this point, so the rest of the party engaged the giants while she booked for the keep. They weren't able to keep all of the giants busy, so Maya poured some oil of slipperiness behind her to slow them down. Fortunately, they fell, but the fight was generally going nowhere fast. While one or two of the giants did eventually get killed, it was simply taking too long and there was no way to protect Maya and the High Anvil from the Frost Giants.

We would get some unexpected and entirely unintentional help from another competitor for the High Anvil. The one-eyed white dragon, whose other eye was sitting in Lorne's Keep, suddenly appeared from underneath the snow. At this point, normally all hope would be lost, but the appearance of the dragon alerted those at the Keep of our situation. After a little while, Maya was surprised to run into something. One of the ski ships from the Keep had appeared in front of her; it was enchanted and had the same teleportation powers as a unicorn. With this, the crew collected our party and we teleported back to the keep, leaving the dragon behind.

We found out we had missed one of the dark dwarves during our attack on the underground fortress, and he managed to inform a large party that was away from the fortress at the time. Thus, we found ourselves being pursued by a heavily-armed war party. We decided to run, but the High Anvil was slowing us down, and it was attracting even more attention as we soon had five frost giants pursuing from another direction.

Realizing that they didn't have a way to move it without her ring, Maya convinced the party to leave the High Anvil behind for the moment. We then ran out of sight, and Maya used her Clairvoyance spell to observe the battle now taking place between the dwarves and the frost giants. We figured that one side would win, but just barely, and we were right as a couple dwarves survived the battle. It was an easy matter to defeat them and retrieve the High Anvil, and we then finally managed to get the Anvil to the Keep.