-Outside the Winter Palace
Here, now, even in the dark, they look different than they have when any of you have passed them. Viewed from the safety and distance of the Praxian plains, the ruins looked grey, cracked and less than whole. They gleamed in the Praxian sun, but seemed broken and, well, ruined.
Before you now is the Winter Palace, huge and ominous in the dark and cold. Viewed in the reddish light of the nearly-full moon, sheer and nearly shear walls of gleaming grey, white and bluish marble rise out of the top of the plateau. The shape is vaguely reminiscent of a earthly 17th century star fort. (Not that the Heroes know what one of those is.)
But the Palace is taller than any ground-hugging star fort, rising over 100 feet into the cold, still air.
Still, but not silent, along with the skruch of your animals' hooves in the crust of frost on the ground, the grind and crack of ice moving comes to all of you. It sounds distant, huge, and coming from the Palace.
