Are they all very confident that there are not monsters on the route, such that he should not bring his armor or weapon? They're heavy but it's really much better to lug them around than it is to be caught without them by even a fairly minor monster, especially if he's got his spells prepared for a journey and not a fight.

They are very confident there aren't monsters. The most threatening thing would be a polar bear but what would they eat? A polar bear is admittedly pretty threatening, though. Also, bandits or whatever the equivalent is, perhaps.

He should definitely bring the weapon. Maybe he should have been training with a gun this whole time, too, but it's a bit late for that now. They're less sure about the armor.

The armor is much heavier than the weapon but if they will all have ranged weapons of their own he will bring his mace as backup and leave the chainmail behind.

Joseph and Nuts aren't as good with their ranged weapons as the two hunters who use them professionally, but they do have them.

Leon drags everyone into a group meeting where they go over the planned route, what maps they have of it, how they're going to map and mark their progress- Nuts has a clever arrangement with surveyor's tools and known landmarks and math- And what everyone should pack, and practicing common trail hand signs (the important ones are 'stop', 'go', 'caution', and 'attack'), and what to do if they're separated (fire your flare gun, fresh from the machine shop, straight into the air, wait for eight hours, if no flare responds try to go back to the last major landmark the expedition visited), and so on and so on. They'll be moving with rope tied to each other if the weather gets bad and on dangerous slopes, but it's been good recently and there's no signs that's about to change.

He's planning to prepare Snow Shape at least once a day and that should help with awkward icy terrain.

That'll help. 

Leon also leads everyone on a two hour hike to the nearest abandoned oil car. Packs fit alright? Not too cold? Socks and shoes dry? Can you keep this pace up for twelve hours? (Nuts groans in complaint but nods.) Have everything you need in your pack? Great! They'll set off tomorrow, then.

(June seems to be deliberately ignoring him.)

That is not unexpected when you rebuff somebody and it's fine.

They're seen off with a good bit of fanfare the next morning... And then it's a lot of walking over ice and snow. The wind whips up once they're beyond the cliffs of the old wreck. It can be shouted over, but this is difficult enough to deter casual conversation. Only Nuts doesn't care and continues to explain navigation and surveying techniques in a long-winded wizardy way.

Cliffs. Ice. Snow. And more snow. And more ice. They walk along a long frozen riverbed for most of the first day, and camp in a little crevice.

(They should set out significantly more than an hour after dawn, so that they are never in a situation where someone is freezing to death with their spell run out while Blai is still praying - it may not be possible to reliably hit exactly twenty-four hours every time, but if dawn shifts, or the casting time creeps earlier, they need some buffer.)

Their day begins at five o'clock, well before dawn even in this northern region.

The next day is more of the same. The riverbed ends and they're exposed to harsher wind. Nuts's surveying and measurements slow them down a bit.

They get to the old site of Fishing Village at the end of the second day. The buildings are actively falling apart, wracked by ice and wind. There's a long line of graves. They shelter in the most intact building.

"Have you thought much about what you want to accomplish in the long term, Blai?" Asks Leon over dinner. "... Anyway, I think I'd like to learn more about Iomedae, as long as there's little else to talk about."

"I don't think I have enough context for a long term plan yet... but of course, what would you like to know?"

"I've heard what you explained to the others but I think it's distorted in the telling. Lawful means that one attends to oaths and promises, does not break the laws without a very good reason, and so forth? What if the laws are foul amd despicable?"

"It is ideal to cooperate with a legitimate authority if one is available, but - do you have here the concept of 'illegal orders'?"

"-I suppose it makes sense as a concept. I would not listen to one who told me to kill a fellow hunter without giving cause or explanation, and might club him over the head and tie him up for fear of sudden insanity."

"Right, so, if you're going to be Lawful under conditions where the authority at issue is Evil, I think that's probably a useful concept, that even if they're legitimate their authority can't be scoped to the point where you're doing Evil things they tell you to do. And it also matters how you, sort of, introduce yourself - if you're conducting a war, you don't become a lawless murderer when you set foot into enemy territory and carry out an attack, even though they might easily have laws against that, because you were not presenting yourself as - a fellow countryman of their people who ought to be expected to be restrained by such a law. I don't know how this applies to intelligence gathering, unfortunately, I'm piecing it together from the Acts and a few other sources."

"It might be worth talking over our choices of when fighting would be justified, as a group, then. I'm certainly no general, but conflict with other people... Gets very messy, very easily. We nearly had a war of sorts with the village of Old Sawmill- Idiot lusting after a woman from that place, was bothering her, her brothers beat him up, he was plotting revenge against the brothers-" Sigh. "Well, he wouldn't listen to reason and we don't really have the facilities to imprison people, so when he vanished, we warned the brothers about him, and disavowed his actions, and then they shot him dead a few days later and Old Arnold managed to convince both families to not keep going."

"It sounds like you handled that well given the givens... I don't think Old Sawmill has come up before."

"I wasn't involved in making those decisions. Too young at the time... But it struck me how easily we could end up murdering one another when the cold is already trying to do us in. Ah, we call it Forest sometimes. They were built around, well, an old sawmill, we traded meat and rendered oils for planks and woodcraft. They told us their situation was untenable and left, hoping to find and immigrate to New London, about fifteen years ago."

Nod nod. "You're unusually longstanding holdouts?"

"Yes. We- Before you came along, we figured trying to find New London was a desperate gamble, and maybe we could hold on with seal and forage until the Frost finally vanishes as a safer one. If it's going to vanish."

Nod. "We'll see what New London is like now, soon."

"Indeed. So, we are not at war with New London. But we are not subjects of it either. If we're confronted by a hostile force claiming or actually being of New London, do we try to talk? Do we surrender, or run? What if we see them committing some atrocity? 'Try to learn what's going on' seems like a safe first line..."

"Learn what's going on, announce our intentions and stick to them as far as we can."

"That sounds sensible. And our intentions are... Learning about New London, surviving to report back, and helping people in in need to a reasonable degree? Everyone agree with that?"

There's a reluctant nod, a distracted nod, and an attentive nod from the other three.

"So, this is why when I promised that I owe you, for helping our community, I caveated it with 'so long as it's within my power and not horrible'. I didn't have a word for it, but I wouldn't accept an illegal order to repay of that debt... If that holds together as a concept."

"Of course, and I wouldn't want to ask such a thing."